Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising

by Annie Nathan Meyer

XX

Annys no longer had the strength to continue on his journey into Kent. That night he spent in alternately praying upon his knees and pacing up and down in anguish of spirit. Although a child of Mediævalism, and more or less heir to the Mediæval ideas and superstitions, yet there was much within him that was in advance of his age. He could not take comfort in the current conception of the nature of woman. His dearly cherished views on the marriage of the clergy, his profound hope that the love of woman would be lifted from the base, animal view that obtained in the morbid fancy of the followers of Mani,—all went to arouse within him a trust and belief in womanhood which chafed at his contemptible action in throwing all the blame upon Rose. Often in the past had he been overwhelmed with shame as he read the cynical confessions of priest after priest and saint after saint, wherein all the weakness of the man had been laid on the ofttimes innocent shoulders of the woman. He always had had a contempt for the horrible selfishness that could permit a saint to sin with a woman, and then in a fit of repentance mount to heaven with beatific grace while at the same instant with perfect equanimity he sees the woman sink into the awaiting fires of hell.

And then there came swiftly upon him the recollection that the practical outcome of his sudden pious exaltation had been to leave a beautiful and helpless girl at the mercy of an unscrupulous man like Stott. In that thought lay a strong agony that was not entirely spiritual. Enraged both at himself and the pardoner, he would gladly have strangled the fellow, had he but come upon him at that instant.

The slow-footed dawn came and found him worn and discouraged. He was utterly unfit to go upon his mission to Kent. The joy of helping others should be vouchsafed only to such as first can help themselves. He, forsooth, a leader of other men! No longer could he lead himself. He was but a broken reed. The calm shelter of the Abbey appealed to him with renewed insistence. He could close his eyes and instantly the chapel with its dim religious light was before him. He could see the dark, cowled figures of the monks passing in noiselessly, he could see their bowed heads as they devoutly worshipped. The beautiful chanted responses, the sombre throb of the organ, shook him to the very soul.

So he went to Matilda and told her that he was about to ask to be taken back into the Church, in order to have a brief respite in a holy retreat.

"I have chosen to go, not to St. Edmund's, but St. Dunstan's, ten miles on.

"I am all at sea," he added pathetically, "adrift and helpless. Perhaps I have been too stiff-necked. Perhaps God hath punished me for concerning myself too much with things temporal. Perhaps after all the Church is right in that the mission on earth of the priestly office is not to make earth a better abiding-place, but so to lift up the minds of men, so to fill their hearts with thoughts of the life hereafter, that the ills of this life sink into utter insignificance."

Some of his old-time arguments against that false conception of Christianity rose to her lips in reply. The very words that he had spoken to her again and again she longed to speak, and yet a certain pride held her silent. She could not bear to have him think she was pleading for herself. Of course he could not marry her if he entered again into the Church, and yet she would not have been human had there been no comfort in the thought that neither could he marry any other woman. For, with the quick intuition of a woman who loves, she had read the secret that was torturing him. There had been moments when she had been tempted to give him his freedom and permit him to wed her cousin. But she read his heart too profoundly to believe that he could ever look on Rose as a poor priest's wife. He was wrestling with the Evil One, and it was her part only to pray for him, which she did with all the strength and fervor of her pure soul.

He looked down on her, and he thought his heart would break within him as he realized how strongly he yearned, really yearned, to love this dear, sweet woman, and how utterly impossible it was for her frank, pure eyes to quicken one beat of his pulse. For he had learned something, and he knew now that men did not love merely with their minds and souls. He knew now that, save he loved with every drop in his veins and every nerve in his body, it was not what men called love. He took her firm, strong hand in his, and readily would he have cut his own from his arm could he have felt shoot through him the exquisite bounding of the pulses that would come even from the faintest touch of Rose's hand. What was this marvellous emotion that comes not and goes not as a man wills it?