"I did not answer. The question seemed to me to be addressed to himself, not to me. I could leave him to seek for the answer. After a moment he went on eating and drinking in silence. When he had finished I asked him whether he would take coffee. He said he would, and I made him pass into the St. Joseph /salle/. There I brought him coffee and-- and that liqueur. I told him that it was my invention. He seemed to be interested. At any rate, he took a glass and praised it strongly. I was pleased. I think I showed it. From that moment I felt as if we were almost friends. Never before had I experienced such a feeling for anyone who had come to the monastery, or for any monk or novice in the monastery. Although I had been vexed, irritated, at the approach of a stranger I now felt regret at the idea of his going away. Presently the time came to show him round the garden. We went out of the shadowy parlour into the sunshine. No one was in the garden. Only the bees were humming, the birds were passing, the cats were basking on the broad path that stretched from the arcade along the front of the /hotellerie/. As we came out a bell chimed, breaking for an instant the silence, and making it seem the sweeter when it returned. We strolled for a little while. We did not talk much. The stranger's eyes, I noticed, were everywhere, taking in every detail of the scene around us. Presently we came to the vineyard, to the left of which was the road that led to the cemetery, passed up the road and arrived at the cemetery gate.
"'Here I must leave you,' I said.
"'Why?' he asked quickly.
"'There is another Father who will show you the chapel. I shall wait for you here.'
"I sat down and waited. When the stranger returned it seemed to me that his face was calmer, that there was a quieter expression in his eyes. When we were once more before the /hotellerie/ I said:
"'You have seen all my small domain now.'
"He glanced at the house.
"'But there seems to be a number of rooms,' he said.
"'Only the bedrooms.'
"'Bedrooms? Do people stay the night here?'
"'Sometimes. If they please they can stay for longer than a night.'
"'How much longer?'
"'For any time they please, if they conform to one or two simple rules and pay a small fixed sum to the monastery.'
"'Do you mean that you could take anyone in for the summer?' he said abruptly.
"'Why not? The consent of the Reverend Pere has to be obtained. That is all.'
"'I should like to see the bedrooms.'
"I took him in and showed him one.
"'All the others are the same,' I said.
"He glanced round at the white walls, the rough bed, the crucifix above it, the iron basin, the paved floor, then went to the window and looked out.
"'Well,' he said, drawing back into the room, 'I will go now to see the Pere Abbe, if it is permitted.'
"On the garden path I bade him good-bye. He shook my hand. There was an odd smile in his face. Half-an-hour later I saw him coming again through the arcade.
"'Father,' he said, 'I am not going away. I have asked the Pere Abbe's permission to stay here. He has given it to me. To-morrow such luggage as I need will be sent over from Tunis. Are you--are you very vexed to have a stranger to trouble your peace?'
"His intensely observant eyes were fixed upon me while he spoke. I answered:
"'I do not think you will trouble my peace.'
"And my thought was:
"'I will help you to find the peace which you have lost.'
"Was it a presumptuous thought, Domini? Was it insolent? At the time it seemed to me absolutely sincere, one of the best thoughts I had ever had--a thought put into my heart by God. I didn't know then--I didn't know."
He stopped speaking, and stood for a time quite still, looking down at the sand, which was silver white under the moon. At last he lifted his head and said, speaking slowly:
"It was the coming of this man that put the spark to that torch. It was he who woke up in me the half of myself which, unsuspected by me, had been slumbering through all my life, slumbering and gathering strength in slumber--as the body does--gathering a strength that was tremendous, that was to overmaster the whole of me, that was to make of me one mad impulse. He woke up in me the body and the body was to take possession of the soul. I wonder--can I make you feel why this man was able to affect me thus? Can I make you know this man?
"He was a man full of secret violence, violence of the mind and violence of the body, a volcanic man. He was English--he said so--but there must have been blood that was not English in his veins. When I was with him I felt as if I was with fire. There was the restlessness of fire in him. There was the intensity of fire. He could be reserved.
He could appear to be cold. But always I was conscious that if there was stone without there was scorching heat within. He was watchful of himself and of everyone with whom he came into the slightest contact.
He was very clever. He had an immense amount of personal charm, I think, at any rate for me. He was very human, passionately interested in humanity. He was--and this was specially part of him, a dominant trait--he was savagely, yes, savagely, eager to be happy, and when he came to live in the /hotellerie/ he was savagely unhappy. An egoist he was, a thinker, a man who longed to lay hold of something beyond this world, but who had not been able to do so. Even his desire to find rest in a religion seemed to me to have greed in it, to have something in it that was akin to avarice. He was a human storm, Domini, as well as a human fire. Think! what a man to be cast by the world--which he knew as they know it only who are voracious for life and free--into my quiet existence.
"Very soon he began to show himself to me as he was, with a sort of fearlessness that was almost impudent. The conditions of our two lives in the monastery threw us perpetually together in a curious isolation.