"Ha, ha, Sir Russet-priest, so this is the way you follow the call of
your dear Master, Jesus Christ! 'Wheresoever my Master calls me,' I
think you said to me. Ho, ho, odsooks! did the good Lord graciously
call me into so fair a place, I doubt not I should go even as
willingly." The two sprang apart and saw the evil face of Hugo Stott
leering at them. Rose was frankly frightened and turned again and clung
to Annys, whose first impulse was such as any man would feel, to strike
the impudent fellow to the ground. But an uncomfortable trick had
grown upon him of recalling certain bits of the Gospel at all moments
of excitement, and the particular lines that now rang through his brain
had in them an appositeness that staid his hand:--
"If thou give fully to thy soul the delight of her desire, she will
make thee the laughing-stock of thine enemies."
Indeed, it had come. Already he was the laughing-stock of his enemy.
He was degraded before the very scum of the earth. He had brought the
name of his beloved Lord on the lips of a sneering pardon-seller.
He was held up, a self-convicted hypocrite, before the very prince
of hypocrites. What could he say for himself? What could he plead?
Nothing, save that he was in the grasp of the same terrible power that
had brought ruin to hundreds before him. Ah! but stay, he had done
wrong, great wrong; he had sinned grievously, yet by some miraculous
interposition of the Lord he had been drawn back from the last step
that would have cast him into the pit of hell. He had been saved. And
by what a hand! Yet, although it had pleased Heaven to send a strange
instrument of salvation, nevertheless, he must render due thanks to his
deliverer. So, to Stott's utter surprise, instead of felling him to
the earth, Annys flung off the girl and extended his hand humbly to him.
"Thanks," he said contritely. "Thou hast snatched me from the jaws of
hell."
Stott could scarce believe his eyes, for he was but too ready to
believe that Robert Annys was as the usual run of the priests he
encountered, ever ready to preach, but not so ready to practise.
In the sudden religious exaltation that swept over him Annys was
totally unconscious of his cruelty toward the woman whom he had just
clasped in his arms. He could think only of his own wonderful escape.
Rose rested on the ground as she had been flung, half reclining, half
kneeling, dazed at the sudden change that had come over the ardent
lover of a minute before. The uppermost thought in her mind was how
handsome he looked in his new-found indignation. His eyes, at other
times the pale blue eyes of a dreamer, now scintillated as the dark
blue night sky, when the air is crisp and clear and thrilling with the
glory of the stars. Deep down within her lay a discontent that all his
passion for her had awakened in his eyes no such splendor. She longed
to be able to awaken that light in his eyes purely for herself alone;
she was fascinated by the peculiar change it wrought in his face; she
found a certain pleasure in watching him impersonally, quite as if the
object of his indignation were some one else and not herself at all.
As he drew himself up and looked down upon the girl, her beauty seemed
to him surely of the Evil One. There rushed over him a horror that he
could have succumbed so easily to the temptation that befalls every
anchorite. What? was it possible that he, Robert Annys, had been ready
but an instant ago to deny his people, to draw them from their most
sacred cause, ready to desert the great-hearted leader to whom he had
sworn lealty, all for this woman before him? Could one fall lower than
this? He had been all too willing to trail the fair robes of the Holy
Spouse in the dust to keep this creature by his side. He had listened
to her pleadings to make himself a great prelate solely that he might
twine golden chains in her locks; he to set yet another example before
the people of rapacity and sensuality within the Church, and thereby
discourage by so much every honest reformer! God! what wonder that he
took it all as a manifestation of the powers of the Evil One? If a
mage had appeared unto him and showed him a magnet which drew to it
all the trees of the forest, one by one, until they all lay upturned
and useless, with great gaping wounds in the earth, where, but a
moment before, they had risen proudly, would he not have declared him
a sorcerer, and taken him to some holy man to have him purged of his
devil? or had him burned publicly at the stake? And what else but some
evil sorcery could draw a man from the place where he had been rooted
deep down, could sever his heart at a blow from all the things that
he held sacred, and could leave him prostrate and useless, a cause of
stumbling to the wayfarer?
He had been saved at the eleventh hour by divine interposition. His
soul quivered with joy at again being accepted of the Lord. He raised
his crucifix high over the crouching figure of the girl, and, after
crossing himself on the breast and shoulders, he launched forth the
terrible words of exorcism:--
"Satan, enemy of the Faith, enemy of the human race, who brought Death
into the world, who has rebelled against all justice, seducer of man,
root of all evil, promoter of all vices, come out, come out, I command
you, from the body of this woman. Come forth, come forth, I command
you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
At last Rose awoke to the situation. Her amused incredulity of the
whole strange scene now gave way to a furious anger that he could dare
so to humiliate her. That comes of permitting a priest to make love
to you--you never know when the saint will conquer the mere man. And
there he stood in such immaculateness, his robes gathered about him,
his form drawn up as if there were contamination in her very touch.
There he stood, clasping that crucifix as if the Lord on it were his
own special protector. Why didn't he go and have done with it? If he
was remorseful, so was she; she never wanted to see his sanctimonious
face again. And there was that horrid knob-nosed pardoner looking
on! How dared he! how dared he! She would reply to him, she would
shame him for his cowardice, she would--What she did do was to throw
herself face downward on the ground, shedding tears of exasperation
and impotent rage. Annys, taking this, very naturally, for a sign of
penitence, thought that his exorcism had had effect, and strode off
well satisfied, leaving the pardoner to gloat over the beauty of the
girl with whom he so strangely and unexpectedly found himself alone.
For an instant he watched the departing figure of the young priest with
jaw dropped in astonishment. Could it all have been a magnificent piece
of acting? No, it was impossible; even to such a cynic as Hugo Stott,
it was evident that the man had been thoroughly in earnest. He looked
at the girl and his eyes glistened. He tiptoed up to her.
"The devil or no devil, 'tis a delicate morsel. I fear not the devil,
nor anything else when 'tis so well disguised."
He would have liked to bury his ugly face in her white neck, but, even
as he approached her, she turned suddenly and screamed so loud that
instantly a number of men rushed from the fair grounds. They could only
swear roundly at the disappearing figure of the pardoner, who had lost
no time in making off as quickly as his long gown and clumsy form would
permit.
The sight of Rose, pale and trembling, and the obvious inference of
what might have happened had they been less prompt, did not tend to
make them waste any love on monks and pardoners. Little enough love
wasted already!