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

by Annie Nathan Meyer

"I must go to Betty now," Annys said. "Good-by, Matilda, I shall see thee soon again—immediately after the Fair." He kissed her on the forehead, and for the first time he felt her shrink from his touch.

"Be sure to return in time from that important mission!" Rose called after him. And Matilda looked at her, wondering.

He walked rapidly on, his mind in a whirl, taking no note of where he was going. That sudden, unpremeditated lie agonized him. And yet, perhaps, after all, this lie would be his salvation. Perhaps once away from that girl with her maddening beauty he could cast off the spell she had wrought upon him. It was a daily torture to meet Matilda with a lie on his heart, to meet Rose was but a torture of another kind. Yes, he would go away for a brief spell.

Suddenly he found himself before the walls of the Monastery of the Bury St. Edmonds. For the first time he longed for the peace that was there. There, before him, was but the thickness of a few stones, and yet the men behind it, how immeasurably separated were they from the rest of the world! All the forces of nature—chains of mountains and the turbulent streams of the forests—had not in them the powers of isolation that rested in that wall erected by the hand of man. He stood without, in the midst of the strenuousness, the revolt, the passion, and sorrow of the world: they within were taken up and cared for as little children in the lap of some great-hearted Mother. The world and its ways and all worldliness went on far from them, and no sound of the battle of the forces, good and evil, ever was heard. An orderly and unbroken succession of tasks was laid out for them. They had no difficult problems to weigh, no decisions to make. Ah, how he envied them for that! There was no fretting over the duty of the morrow or the day after the morrow, the mind was kept fixed on the duty of the moment; from this one passed imperceptibly to the duty of the hour, to the duty of the day. From Matin to Prime and from Prime to Tierce, from Tierce to Sexte, and Sexte to None, and again to Vespers and on to Compline, certain tasks that in no case may be missed or deferred: prayers to be chanted during the day; one hundred and fifty psalms of David divided so that the whole psalter should be chanted every week; the taking one's turn to be cook, or to wait upon the table in the refectory, or to read from some pious book while the others ate in silence. So, calmly, unresisting, one slipped down the gentle slope to death.

Ah, no wonder Alcuin had passionately lamented his cloister when he was called to the court of Charlemagne:—

"Oh, my sweet cell! and well-beloved home. Adieu forever!

Dear cell! I shall weep thee and regret thee always."

But the solace of even a short sojourn within a Monastery was denied him—the excommunicated one. It had been easy for him to fling defiance to the Church when upheld by his sense of righteousness, but now, no longer sinless, he yearned to kneel before the altar and be shrived.

In the course of his life it had come to him to determine what was the right thing to do—there had never been a question of knowing the right and not doing it. Now the right path lay clearly defined, without the slightest doubt, yet it was to be a life and death struggle to follow it. During the past few days he had pored for hours at a time over the "Lives of the Saints," reading again and again their denunciations of women, hoping to strengthen his purpose to prove that the love of woman could be pure. It was his most deeply cherished hope that his example in taking a wife like Matilda would lead to the establishment of a married clergy. Up to this moment, knowing the purity and nobility of his motives, he had not shrunk from the indignation of the Churchmen that was sure to break forth on his taking a woman openly in wedlock. And now he was obliged to admit to himself that he loved a woman whom it would be impossible to marry. Impossible because of his plighted troth to Matilda, but also—and that hurt deeper—because she was surely no ideal priest's wife. His high and mighty theories on the marriage of the clergy must vanish into thin air if he held up Rose as a proper spouse for a priest of God. Rose to kneel before the leper and wash his feet! Rose to enter the homes of the afflicted and hunger-stricken and bring them comfort! No, there was nothing gained by trying to shut his eyes to the truth. He loved a woman who could not further one strong hope of his soul, who could not answer to one noble impulse.

"Give not thy soul unto a woman, that she should set her foot upon thy strength."