The Reverend Osney Possnett, who had never had a chance in his life of reaching a point of declamation beyond what was necessary for the adequate reproof of a ploughman for neglecting to attend Divine service, and who had never been addressed except with respect bordering upon awe since the days of his curacy, found himself in a mental condition for which the word flabbergasted was invented by a philologist in the lumber trade. When he had told Priscilla that she was forgetting herself he forgot himself. He forgot his part. He had come to the Manor House, on the invitation of his churchwarden, Farmer Wadhurst, to administer a severe rebuke to Farmer Wadhurst’s self-willed daughter, whose early religious instruction he had superintended, and who, he saw no reason to doubt, would be at once amenable to his ministration; but he found himself forced not only to enter into something of an argument with her—a course of action which was very distasteful to him—but also to be reproved by her for a sensualist, looking at the fleshly side of marriage instead of the spiritual—to be told by her that his opinion was of no greater value than that of an ordinary man who had never been granted the distinction of holy orders, which the whole world recognizes as a proof of the possession of the highest culture, pagan as well as Christian, the most virile human intellect, and an intuitive knowledge of mankind, such as ordinary people can only gain by experience!
He had come to be letter-perfect in the part which he had meant to play in her presence, and with a good working knowledge of the “business” of the part; but she had failed to act up to him. She had disregarded the cues which he waited for from her, and the result was naturally the confusion that now confronted him—that now overwhelmed him. He had in his mind actually, if unconsciously, the feeling that it was her failure in regard to her cues which had put him out, when he cried:
“Priscilla, you forget yourself.”
“No, you do not quite mean that,” she said, with a disconcerting readiness; “you do not quite mean that; you mean that I forget that for years I sat Sunday after Sunday under your pulpit listening to your preaching—that for years and years you gave your opinion, which was followed without question, to my father and mother on the subject of my bringing up; that until now I was submissive to you, with all the members of the household. That is what you had on your mind just now, and I do not wonder at it. I have amazed you. I don’t doubt it; I have amazed myself. The troubles which I have had during the past eighteen months—you call them trials, and that is the right word—have been the means of showing me myself—showing me what I am as an individual: that I am not merely as a single grain of sand running down with a million other grains in the hour-glass only to mark time till the whole are swallowed up. I thank God for those trials which have made me what I am to-day. I can even thank God for the present trial, terrible though it seems, because I have faith in God’s way of working to bring out all that is best in man and woman; and I know that we shall come out of it with our love for each other strengthened and our belief in God strengthened. That is what you forgot when you came here to-day, Mr. Possnett; you forgot the power that there is in suffering to develop the character, the nature, the individuality, the human feeling and the Divine love of every one who experiences it. That was your mistake: you did not make allowance for God’s purpose in suffering. You thought that I should be the same to-day that I was eighteen months ago. You have much to learn, both of God and man, Mr. Possnett. So have I. I am learning daily.”
The Reverend Osney Possnett lifted up his hands—the attitude was that of Moses blessing the congregation; but by a sudden increase of emphasis and a tightening of the hands into fists it became the attitude of Balak the son of Zippor reproving Balaam the Prophet for having betrayed the confidence reposed in him as an agent of commination. He was not a man of any intelligence worth speaking of, and with so limited an experience of the world that the least departure from the usual found him without resources for meeting it. Such men are unwise if they make the attempt to play the usual against the unusual. They are wisest in avoiding it.
The Reverend Osney Possnett showed that he was not without wisdom by his retreat. Sorrow and not indignation was the lubricant of his farewell. His prayer was that she might be brought to see in what direction the truth lay before it should be too late.
And that was just the prayer to which Priscilla could say “Amen!” with all her heart.