"When will be the happy day?" she drawled.
He started nervously. "I have a journey to take," he said in a strained
voice. "I leave to-morrow. I do not know just when I can return."
Rose's eyebrows lifted in surprise. Matilda regarded him anxiously.
"Yea, I have received an urgent call. I had come to tell thee."
But there had been no call, and Rose's mocking eyes seemed to read his
subterfuge.
"Wilt return for the Fair?" she asked.
"Surely," he answered, "I have promised to be there. Men will gather
there from every county."
"I will be there," she announced quickly, and then laughed to see the
dismay in his face.
"And Matilda, too, surely?" he hastened to ask. But Matilda shook her
head.
"I may not be spared," she said gently.
"Oh, yes, Matilda is the saint. I am the selfish, wilful one," laughed
Rose, who seemed determined to make Annys uncomfortable.
"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."
But that was precisely what he had done. Every argument proved
conclusively that he never ought to see Rose Westel again. But one
might as well seek by argument to stop a raging flood from bearing down
upon one as to attempt to argue away an emotion. There was no need
to convince him that he ought to hate the woman who had so suddenly
wrought ruin upon his most cherished hopes. A part of him did hate
her--the rest of him adored.
There was prayer left to him. He had tried prayer with all the fervor
of his tortured soul. The night before, following the advice of one
of the Fathers, he had passed upon his knees reiterating only the one
phrase,--
"Deus meus et Omnia."
"My God and my All, My God and my All."
His heart was overshadowed by the thought that God had surely withdrawn
His love from him or He could not permit him to suffer so. Again and
again he had flung himself on his knees and sobbed out the prayer
uttered by St. Augustine when he was endeavoring to overcome the ways
of his youth:--
"Thou, my Lord, how long yet? O Lord, how long yet wilt thou be angry?
How long? How long? Why not in this hour put an end to my shame?"
It was easy when alone to ponder over such words as those of St.
Jerome:--
"Love the knowledge of the Scriptures and thou wilt not love the lusts
of the flesh."