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

XIV

The day following his interview with Meryl, Annys was obliged to answer an urgent call from the men of a hamlet outside of the See of Ely. These people had refused to pay the tithes due to the Church, seeing that the rector was a man who had never seen those parts, and who had long since rented the church building to a precious couple who conducted there a highly profitable tavern.

Notwithstanding the strong case which the people surely had, the Church prepared to wage a bitter struggle to enforce its rights. For it would never do in the world to admit the principle that the people but paid for service rendered. Indeed, such an admission would end in the bankruptcy of many an entire diocese. The people craved the help and advice of Robert Annys. There was no doubt on which side he would be found. Meryl accompanied him part of the distance on his way to Gloucester to confer with the men of that neighborhood. He had asked for some work to do that would help him forget his keen disappointment and that at the same time would take him from Matilda's presence. As the two men separated, they clasped hands warmly, and Meryl promised to do his utmost to gain strength and courage to take up again his life at the Bury. He was determined, however, not to return until Matilda and the poor priest were wedded.

Directly on the line of the hamlet where Annys was awaited, lay Colchester, in the county of Essex, on the outskirts of which dwelled the wife of the refugee who had been saved by the devotion of the Westels. Annys found her on the point of giving birth to a child, and kept from actual starvation only by the generosity of those who had but little more than she. When she learned from the poor priest that not alone her husband was safe, but that he was earning fair wages, a portion of which Annys bore for her in his wallet, her pinched face brightened. He was strangely touched by her broken murmurs of gratitude; never before had an expectant mother appealed to him in the same way. His heart warmed even toward the three-year-old fellow who peered at him dubiously from his mother's skirts. The knowledge that before long he would take unto himself a wife was a leaven that leavened every thought and every act.

Although he endured great hardship tramping along the highway, with little rest and less food, although he bore with him always the heavy responsibilities he had assumed, nevertheless his fortnight of absence sped by as in a dream. He seemed to move in a new and strange world. His heart leapt within him because he experienced a totally new and more intimate sense of fellowship with the rest of mankind. There was given him a keener and profounder insight into their hearts. Scarce could he keep his eyes from the laborers who returned at nightfall from the fields and swung their tots over their heads. He followed funeral cortÈges as they wound over hill and dale with tears dimming his eyes. A new understanding of the agony of separation came upon him. He thought much of his mother, who was but a beautiful memory to him. He wondered where she was buried, and resolved to discover her grave, if possible, and visit it to whisper to her his new-found happiness.

For there had long been growing within him the conviction that the Church could not truly be brought to the people until the clergy became more a part of the people. The clergy could not truly minister to the people until they understood the people, until they shared the same hopes and joys, the same fears and sorrows. The great emotions that come with family life and family affections must be brought back to those that served men. He felt that the very completeness of the self-surrender that had been demanded by the early Fathers of the Church had struck a false note that had rung down the centuries,—the note of a cold egoism and isolation of spirit. With all the strength of his soul he rebelled against the cruel mandate of St. Jerome, which was responsible for much that was abnormal in the lives of the saints:—

"Though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your mother, with dishevelled hair and tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass over your father's body. Fly with tearless eyes to the banner of the cross.... Such chains as these, the love of God and fear of hell can easily break."

This drying up of the commonest sources of affection, how could it spread the love and fellowship which were the essence of Christliness? Even the indomitable believer in celibacy, the great Hildebrand himself, had said:—

"From love to God to show love to one's neighbor ... this I consider more than prayers, fastings, vigils, or other good works."

And what so readily and completely opens the heart to one's neighbor as to live that neighbor's life?

To watch the love-light of motherhood irradiate the features of your wife as her new-born babe is placed within her arms; to watch the shadow of death creep over the tiny form of the little one you adore; in short, to suffer, to know, to weep, to laugh, as others suffer and know, and weep and laugh—that, and that only, is to love.

It was a deep-seated satisfaction to him that love had come to him as he had always prayed for it,—a beautiful, spiritual, uplifting experience. Love, he had always contended, was a holy thing. Had not Jesus used the simile of the bride and the bridegroom to express the love of the religious for her God, of the priest for his Church? Nevertheless, over all the writings of the Fathers and the Saints a false and unhealthful asceticism had spread a morbid view of sexual love. Their pages were soiled by a horror of passion which in itself was a surrender to it. The very violence of their dread, the very vehemence of their agonies, spoke not only of a lack of self-control, but of a pruriency of imagination which would not have been present in a normal man. Gone utterly was the frank cleanness of the Scriptures:—

"For he created all things that they might have being, and the generative powers of the world are healthsome, and there is no poison of destruction in them."

And in its place came a distorted self-consciousness that was carried to absurd extremes. It caused one saint to cover his hands with rags before he would consent to carry his own mother across a bridge—a highly edifying incident which was related with much spiritual gusto by the saint's biographer.

The tortures of St. Anthony, the revelations of St. Augustine, the temptations of St. Benedict, were all to Robert Annys incomprehensible. He had never known his pulse to bound one beat the quicker at the sight of a woman. Women there had been who, stirred by his great beauty, had striven with such poor art as they possessed to awaken desire within him, but he had always put them aside calmly and passed on in the work of the Lord.

On his return he lost no time in seeking out Matilda. This time he needed no one to interpret the joy that surged up into her face as she looked on him. He smiled tenderly on her as she told him of her doings during his absence, how she had nursed a girl through a terrible fever, how she had read the Gospel to many eager souls, how she had taught an old man his letters, how she had progressed with her grandmother's lessons. Then when she paused, and asked shyly, "Did thy pupil well?" he came close to her and took her hand.

"Well? Why, I could not have done half so well myself. Ah, I need thee, I need thee always. What sayst thou? Canst take me, a poor priest with no better lot to offer thee than that which my master hath enjoined upon me?"

"I shall love thee the better for it," she whispered.

"It will be no easy life. I will cherish thee dearly, yet never can I set thy desires above the call of duty," he said with a certain austereness, as if, even then, he was replying to the charges of the Hierarchy.

"I wish to help thee, not to hinder thee," was her instant reply. And in her face were a faith and an enthusiasm that would never waver.

"Ah, of a truth!" he said, "had Paul known thee, never would he have said a married man is careful only for the things of this world. Surely now I shall belong more truly than ever to the Lord."

He bent over her and kissed her tenderly on her forehead. Her head, with its smooth, orderly golden braids, drooped shyly on to his shoulder, and her heart beat against his. His kiss was such as a brother bestows on a beloved sister, but her lips were too pure to know their loss.

He held her to him in sweet content at having found the wife he had dreamed of. He knew nothing of the love that burns and scorches, instead of soothing, and as he felt the deep peace of being in her presence and feeling her love like a benediction rest upon him, he marvelled yet again, as so often he had done in the past, how the Fathers of the Church could so have maligned the love of man for woman.

His vision stretched far along the future, seeing only peace in his life, and the crowning joy of a woman's touch which blunders not.

"The Lord hath been very gracious unto me," he said simply, looking down on her.

Then, at the sound of a light laugh, he turned and met the eyes of Rose Westel.

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