Chapter XIV: Confession

Somewhere I have read or heard of a marine invertebrate, which, when its stomach disturbs it, throws the oppressive thing away and gets a new one. It is a beautifully simple solution of the problem of life--which problem unquestionably has its centre in those regions--and as triumphant in its utter banality as the method of Columbus with his egg or of Alexander with his Gordian knot. Without doubt, if man had been constructed on that principle, his history would have needed not a thousandth part of the apology which is now a necessary accompaniment of its recital. The myriad ills attendant on digestion, the brutalities, the tremors and the hallucinations, would have entirely lacked their excuse. Conceive the practical humour of the statement that one had no stomach for an enterprise; conceive such a solution of the saturnalian difficulty as Vitellius never dreamed. A permanent and undetachable stomach was certainly the actual curse which Satan inflicted on mankind.

The nearest approach to this impossibly beatific condition consists, as popularised by the Catholic and Universal Church, in throwing away one’s conscience and getting a new one. The priest conducts the process, and the medium is the confessional. Therein the distressing load may be cast, and therefrom the patient be discharged re-equipped. It has all the efficacy of the other, though at the same time hardly its simplicity. For one thing, one cannot do it alone by oneself; for another, a dose of penance is conditional on the treatment--usually a trifle, but sufficient to leave a taste in one’s mouth. However, it is a useful alternative.

Fanchette’s conscience did not often oppress her; but, on the rare occasions when it did, there was always this means at hand to rid herself of its burden. She would go to the little church in the village, ring up Father Leone, and empty her reservoir of sins upon that good man’s devoted head. Then, cleansed and chastened, she would come forth in a rare condition for fresh frolics, the first taste whereof would be comparable with that of a cigarette after a Turkish bath.

These moral “drenchings,” however, though easeful in their results, were painful enough in their process to make a resort to them unwelcome. Fanchette had a constitutional dislike to confessing herself guilty of anything--except of the best intentions; and it was only the recognised destination of those abstract virtues which drove her from time to time to appeal to Providence in the matter of their better understanding, so far as she was concerned. It was in some ways, in this connection, a convenience that Father Leone was both old and deaf; that he was, moreover, an absorbed herbalist, and, if the truth must be spoken, far more interested in vegetable physiology than in Christian ethics. Yet again, to accuse oneself to dull ears had its drawbacks, since the self-exposure necessitated could command no consolation of sympathy to ameliorate its own ugly nakedness. On the whole, perhaps, she would have preferred an intent and properly responsive listener; but, since that was not to be had, she must put up with what was. After all, to confess was the thing; and, if the priest was deaf, it was no business of hers to question Providence as to its selection or affliction of its own ministers.

Fanchette’s conscience had been troubling her, and one afternoon Fanchette went across to the church to renew it. She went very staid and unapproachable, paying no heed to the jests of rude men or the quizzings of gossips. A cavalier, walking up the street, espied the demure figure at a distance away, and dodged behind a corner to avoid recognition by it. Peeping thence, he saw the young woman approach the church, and disappear within its portals, when, convinced of her mission, he immediately came forth and followed in pursuit.

The church of Santa Maria was a dull little edifice, and had been rendered duller by the former duke, Don Philip’s elder brother, who, on his promotion to the crown of Naples, had transferred everything of value from it to his new capital. Without, it was a mere whited sepulchre; within, its necessary appointments exhibited just what decency demanded and no more. Don Carlos had fairly pillaged the building, in fact, and the dross of plate and pinchbeck which remained was hardly worth the considering. From its tinselled high altar to its little paper-petticoated Virgin in an alcove near the door, it was all cheap and tawdry. There were some depressing “stations of the cross” on the walls, and, in a dark place under a painted window, a single confessional box, having a stall for the priest in the middle, and on either side a curtained recess for penitents. When one of these latter desired relief, he or she must pull a little bell-handle in the wall near the altar-rails, the sound caused by which summoned the sacristan, who in his turn summoned the priest from his presbytery hard by.

The cavalier, passing the church portals, went straight up to this presbytery and knocked on its door. He was a little pinchbeck in seeming, like the candlesticks--eloquent somehow of polish without and cheap metal within. He was rather short than tall, neatly built, with very black eyebrows, and in his face a pert insolence suggestive of a popular _café-chanteur’s_. Perfumed, self-assured, and brilliantly veneered, M. la Coque was able to pass with the vulgar for a very complete gentleman. Women, who alone in nature exceed their lords in the gorgeousness of their plumage, found his fine colouring vastly attractive: Fanchette, we know, found it irresistible.

After a short interval the door was opened by Gaspare, the sacristan, who was also general servitor to the meagre household. He was a snuffy old fellow, hoarse-spoken, and with a leery acquisitive eye. He greeted the visitor, with an air as of being on a footing of sly pleasantry with him.

“Ha, signore! What plenary indulgence now for what mischief? Is the market closed to your worship in Parma, that you must come all the way here to get relief?”

La Coque pushed the old man within and closed the door after them.

“Coquin!” he whispered: “be quiet! The indulgence I ask is at your disposal and worth to you just a silver ducat. Come along now. Is his reverence safe bestowed?”

“What wickedness is forward? I don’t budge until I know.”

“Hark to that chink, Gaspare! A double silver ducat to line your old breeches withal! Where is his reverence, I say?”

“Where the last trump wouldn’t disturb him. In the garden, reading.”

“Excellent. When the bell rings for confession I will go and be his substitute.”

The sacristan fairly gasped in his breath.

“What, you will! Do you understand that at the first word the devil will pull you down by the legs through the floor?”

“O, the devil loves a jest, Gaspare, as much as you do!”

“O! A jest is it?”

“Of course--what else. Quick--there goes the bell! Find me a hood and cassock.”

“Who is it?”

“Well, there is no harm in confessing. Mademoiselle Becquet.”

“Ah-ha!” The old rascal’s face puckered like a monkey’s. “An assignation?” He shook his head and waved his hands in rebukeful protest; then turned, and shuffled before, sighing, sighing:

“It is sacrilege; I wash my hands of it; you will pay in advance, signore?”

Fanchette, kneeling in the church alone, gabbled little prayers, and reviewed her programme between whiles. Then she rose, rang the bell, summoned the sacristan, stated her requirements, and withdrew to the confessional-box, where she disposed herself on her knees behind one of the curtains. Shortly she heard the altar rail click, a slow step approach, and her view through the grating towards the chancel was suddenly obscured by the interposition of a bowed, scarce distinguishable head. She settled herself for the ordeal.

“Please, father, give me absolution for what I am about to confess.”

“A timore inimici eripe animam tuam,” responded the seated figure, in a low, mumbling voice. “Deliver yourself, my daughter.”

The penitent hesitated a moment, as if calling up her nerve; bit her lower lip, and began:

“I have to accuse myself, first and foremost, of infidelity.”

“That is bad. Is it spiritual or secular infidelity to which you refer, my child?”

“Infidelity to my lover, father.”

A sudden cough seemed to catch the listener; he crowed a little as he answered:

“To be sure. There will be some good reason for this apostacy, no doubt.”

“It is to be found, father, in my own conscience, which shrinks from the load he would have put upon it.”

“What load? Be specific, child. Has he tempted you to wrong?”

“Not in that way--he knows better. But he desired to use me as his instrument in the ruin of a man he hated.”

“It is admitted, my daughter, that it is lawful sometimes to do evil that good may come of it. Possibly this lover of yours may have seen in his enemy one of those human abnormalities whose destruction, though demanded by every moral law, can only be compassed by craft. In that case you would be doing a positively pious work in helping him. But, as to this infidelity: the word implies, according to my reading of it, a positive no less than a negative sentiment; an attraction as well as a repulsion.”

“Yes, father.”

“May it conceivably be hinted, then, that you have turned not so much _from_ one lover as _towards_ another, his rival in your fleeting affections?”

The penitent did not answer.

“Speak, daughter,” said the confessor, rather violently clearing his throat.

“I cannot, with confidence,” answered Fanchette, thus adjured, with an air of distressed hesitancy. “Certainly I have felt pity for the man; and I have heard it said that pity excites in one a feeling of fondness for the pitied--but I do not know.”

“You do not? This is not confession, but equivocation. Tell me the truth at once, if you would be absolved.”

“How unsparing you are, father! What if I do love him--a little? It is the fault of the first one for imposing such a task on me. He knew my tender heart--he might have foreseen the inevitable result.”

“I think he might indeed.”

“Besides, though the first one is a musical-box, the second is a nightingale.”

“Damnation!” said the confessor.

“Father! What do you mean?”

“I mean that you may go to the devil, Mademoiselle Fanchette Becquet.”

“After you, if you please, M. Charles la Coque.”

“What! you know me?”

“I saw you first in the street; I saw you afterwards through this grating as you approached. Could I mistake you, you wicked wretch? May you be cursed to all eternity for your profanation of this sacred office!”

La Coque sank back a little into the shadows, then bent forward again, and spoke softly:

“Do you know, Fanchette, I think I am coming out to strangle you.”

The young lady, now verging on hysteria, answered with a scornful gasp:

“It would be worthy of a man who could commit such an unutterable meanness--and without a shadow of excuse.”

“O, I had my excuse! I was uncertain of your fidelity; and you see how I was justified in my doubt. Then this opportunity offered, and I couldn’t resist taking it.”

“It was Gaspare, I suppose. You corrupt everybody and everything you touch. Well, you know now I hate you.”

“All’s one for that. It’s not your hate but your love that we’ve got to reckon with. A nightingale, forsooth! That hired automaton--that painted jackdaw mimicking his betters! You shall answer for the insult.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I told you.”

Actually, with the words, he unbuttoned the hatch and stepped forth. She crouched away from him, huddled within the curtain, her breath coming quick. The church was quite empty and silent.

“Come to my loving arms, Fanchette.”

She uttered a little whimper.

“If you were not such a vain fool you would understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That, knowing who you were, I should not so have betrayed myself, if it had been true.”

“It is not true, then?”

“It is true I _do_ pity him--and her.”

“Pity excites a fonder feeling. You have said it.”

She hesitated, saw no way out of the _impasse_, and took refuge in the long-threatened collapse. He succumbed at once.

“O, hush, girl, for heaven’s sake! All the world will hear you.”

“O--O! I don’t care. To be so doubted and put upon; to have served this man as I have; stifled my better feelings for his sake; sought to ruin a mistress, who has never shown me anything but kindness; as good as offered to be the chevalier’s abettor and their go-between--and then to be treated as if I were a perfide and a wanton! I will never give my heart to anyone again; I will beg admission into a convent and end my days a spouse of heaven! O--O!”

He was terrified. He knelt down by the struggling figure, and crushed it within his arms, seeking to suffocate its outcries.

“Fanchette--you are betraying us--for God’s sake compose yourself! There, there, girl--I did not mean it. I believe you, on my soul, to be true to me. We must make our compact binding--indissoluble--never to be questioned from this time by either of us. Come with me--through the sacristy. Gaspare is always my friend--he will be my friend again--and the priest is safe elsewhere. Any moment may bring discovery upon us. Come, lovely and adorable--let us kiss and forgive. Fanchette!”

Little by little, coaxing and caressing, he got her to her feet and away with him. Father Leone, pacing his garden, was left undisturbed to his vegetable meditations, and Fanchette’s conscience had to defer its unloading to a more convenient opportunity.