The Missionary

by George Chetwynd Griffith

She had passed out of his existence and he had passed out of hers. Henceforth their life-circles might touch, but they could never intersect each other. Of course, they would meet again in the world, but only as friends, with perhaps a warmer hand-clasp for the sake of the days that were past and gone for ever, but that was all. He had but one mistress now, the Church. He was hers body and soul to the end, for he had sworn an allegiance which could not be broken save at the risk of his own soul.

One morning, about a week after he had read the paragraph in the Times, he was out on the hillside, going from cottage to cottage of the hundred or so sprinkled round the high road across the hills, for it was his day to carry out the parochial duties of the fraternity. Every day one of the Fathers, as the villagers called them, made his rounds, starting soon after sunrise and sometimes not getting back till after dark, for Father Philip had no belief in the efficacy of fasting and meditation and prayer unless they were supplemented by a literal obedience to the commands of Him who went about doing good. When priest or deacon entered the Retreat, no matter what he was, rich or poor, wedded or single, he had to take the vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. When he left to go back into the world he was absolved from them, and was free to do what seemed best to his own soul.

Vane had just left a little farmhouse upon which a great shame and sorrow had fallen. As too often happens in this district, the only daughter of the house, discontented with the quiet monotony of the farm life, had gone away to Kidderminster to work in a carpet factory. That was nearly eighteen months ago, and the night before she had come back ragged, hungry, and penniless, with a nameless baby in her arms.

As he was walking along the road which led from this farmhouse to the next hamlet thinking of that vanished sister of his and of the poor imbecile in the French asylum, he turned a bend and saw a figure such as was very seldom seen among the villages approaching him about two hundred yards away. He stopped, almost as though he had received a blow on the chest. It was impossible for his eyes to mistake it, and with a swift sense, half of anger and half of disgust, he felt his heart begin to beat harder and quicker. It was Enid, Enid in the flesh.

He had read of her marriage, and of her return with her husband with hardly an emotion. Day after day he had looked upon her future home, the home in which she would live as the wife of another man and the mother of his children, without a single pang of envy or regret—and now, at the first sight of her, his heart was beating, his pulses throbbing, and his nerves thrilling.

True, every heart-beat, every pulse-throb, was a sin now, for she was a wedded wife—and meanwhile she was still coming towards him. In a few minutes more, since it was impossible for him to pass her as a stranger, her hand would be clasped in his, and he would be once more looking into those eyes which had so often looked up into his, hearing words of greeting from those lips which he had so often kissed, and whose kisses were now vowed to another man.

There was a little lane, turning off to the left a few yards away. She had never seen him in his clerical dress, so she could not have recognised him yet. She would only take him for one of the clergy at the Retreat, he had only to turn down the lane—

But no, his old manhood rose in revolt at the idea. That would be a flight, a mean, unworthy flight, unworthy alike of himself and the high resolves that he had taken. It was hard, almost impossible even to think of her as a temptation, as an enemy to his soul, and yet, even if she were, as the leaping blood in his veins told him she might be, was it for him, the young soldier of the Cross, just buckling on his armour, to turn his back upon the first foe he met, even though that foe had once been his best beloved? He set his teeth and clenched his hands, and walked on past the entrance to the lane.

A minute or two later their eyes met. A look of astonished recognition instantly leapt into hers. She shifted the silver handled walking stick into her left hand, and held out the other, daintily gauntleted in tan.