Part 12

And small wonder that the usually placid Abbot was disturbed at heart, for there had been rumors in the air of an intended visit from the Bishop to inquire into certain scandals that for some time past had noisily rung in his ears, in spite of their unwillingness to hear them. At last, but two days ago, a letter had been sent by messenger from the Bishop, announcing that he had been compelled to write, instead of coming in person, because, although his spirit was unfailing, his flesh was all too weak to stand the great burden of his calling. The scathing denunciations in the letter proved indeed that the prelate's "spirit was unfailing," but, severe as they were, the Abbot thanked his stars that at least he had escaped a visit. Before dictating a proper answer to the pastoral letter, an answer that should breathe a spirit of the most complete contrition and humility, once more the abbot read it from beginning to end:--

"_Thomas, by divine compassion, Bishop of Ely, for Christ's sake--Greeting to John Wallingham, Abbot of the Abbey of St. Dunstan._

"Since we, although unworthy, are by the requirements of our office bound to render account of you and all our people before the eternal Judge 'terrible among kings of the earth,' we, therefore, are moved inwardly by grief of heart and pained even to the very marrow of our soul that evils so base, so loathsome, so shameful, so diabolical, so infamous, and so impious, separate you from the body of Christ and join you to the body of our ancient adversary. For the name of Christ is blasphemed by you, and the Holy Scriptures through you who by the mouth of your detestably vile body presume to teach and guide others.

"Now, though absent in body, yet present in spirit, we attempt in writing what we cannot at present accomplish by word of mouth. We admonish you that you take heed to receive this writing of ours as though it were the word of the Lord Himself with awe and humility of mind.

"Therefore we beseech you and command you: let the remembrance of your profession come to you; bring often before your eyes the sacred order to which you belong, to which is joined the vow of chastity; consider also the guidance of souls which you have undertaken, in which should be shown the example of chastity. In addition to these things, ponder, I specially entreat, over the fear of hell, and the love of celestial pleasures. Occupy yourself, I beseech you, by the crucifixion of Christ, for the future, with the importance of a holy conduct of life, cleanse yourself of the stain of crime, and by the radiance of good deeds flee the darkness of your past life, and by the fragrance of a good reputation dispel the repulsive odors which have arisen.

"And so, with the tenderness of my inmost soul, I ask that you drink the bitter portion of this page, inasmuch as it is offered lovingly and that through it you may profit and benefit. Drink, therefore, not only willingly, but eagerly, the bitter cup of your transformation into a new man.

"Farewell in Christ, Farewell."

What could the Abbot write in reply, to convince the Bishop that a visit in person was not necessary? There was a strong probability that a smooth, repentant letter might deceive the old man; but once let his penetrating eyes fall on the Abbot himself, let him come near enough to hear the thousand and one bits of scandal that were floating about the neighborhood, and the Abbot's occupancy of the monastery was but a question of hours. Besides, the Abbot needed time to set in motion an earnest appeal to the Archbishop to relieve him of the "inquisitorial jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely." And if that did not succeed, there still would be Rome to appeal to. Plenty of Abbeys had received this privilege, and the Abbey of St. Dunstan had grown rich and had more moneys to spend than even the powerful Bishop, who had his great estate to keep up and who could not mortgage his properties beyond his own lifetime. The monastery of St. Dunstan had indeed thrived off the popularity of its shrine to St. Mary, to which women came who were desirous of becoming mothers. The divine afflatus had worked so many miracles upon wives who had long disappointed the hopes of their husbands, that its reputation had spread throughout the land. For a while vast content filled the breasts of the fortunate fathers, but little by little certain ugly rumors began to be whispered, and it was these that caused the Bishop's letter.

The patient scribe awaited the Abbot's pleasure. The Abbot fumed and scowled. At last,--

"Most dearly beloved Brother in Christ," he began.

Just then a monk stood before him. "What do you want?" asked the Abbot, somewhat impatiently, since he was at last launched upon the important letter, and it would not do to put off answering it too long, or the writer might suddenly find strength to come in person. "What is it?"

"There stands before the gate a russet priest who begs admission," spoke up the monk.

"Admit him. Why come you to me for that? I am occupied. Begone!"

"But, most revered Father, by his own admission he is under the ban of the Church."

"Ah, so? Let me see him." And the Abbot slowly waddled to the gate, and peered through the bars. There he saw a young poor priest upon his knees.

"What do you wish?" he asked.

"I wish to be received again into the bosom of the Church."

"Do you wish it?"

"Yes, I wish and desire it."

"Your name?"

"Robert Annys."

The Abbot's eyes lit up with triumph. He knew well the story of this wilful young poor priest, who had refused high office at the hand of the Hierarchy and defied it. Perchance if he converted this notorious sinner, the Bishop might be brought to look less severely on his own past sins. The Abbot looked down upon the young man complacently. "The fellow looks meek enough now," he thought. He drew himself up, and spoke in solemn tones the words that would receive the erring one back into the bosom of the Church. Pleasanter work this, by far, and more soothing to his pride, than penning letters of contrition and obeisance.

"Receive, then," he recited, "the sign of the Cross of Jesus Christ and of Christianity, which you have hitherto borne and which the error which had deceived you caused you to lose most miserably."

Then he swung wide the ponderous gate, saying:

"Enter into the house of God, after having departed therefrom, bewildered unhappily by error. Know you that you have been snatched from the snares which are Death and Destruction."

Annys followed the Abbot to his private chamber. The Abbot knew well the type of man before him, the exalted, morbidly self-censorious type, which would fling itself on the cold, hard ground for an entire night for the harboring of an unholy thought. He listened with benignant countenance to the tale of the penitent man, and well he believed his word that this had been his first temptation to sin. He knew, too, that this was a case that required soothing rather than harassing. This was the kind of man whose reason becomes unseated from a real agony of contrition. He laid one fat hand upon the shoulder of the young poor priest who kneeled before him, abjectly.

"How do you know, my son, that it was a woman whom you encountered in the woods on your way here, and who tempted you so sorely?"

How did he know? How could he bring himself to say that every nerve in his body had trembled with ecstasy in her presence?

"Yea, it was a woman, Holy Father, the most beautiful woman on the earth."

The Abbot smiled; in the course of a long experience he had heard of a good many most beautiful women on the earth.

"I know well that it bore the semblance of a woman," he went on suavely, "but how know you that it was other than an evil spirit--one of Satan's minions sent to tempt you on your way to Holy Church?"

Was it possible? Was the whole thing but a horrible vision which had been sent to mock him? Horrible! Was it, then, wholly horrible? Great God! he was undone indeed. Here he kneeled at the foot of his confessor, and, instead of the countenance of his dear Lord, the tantalizing, brilliant beauty of a woman's face was before his eyes. He was utterly lost in sin.

"O Father, most Holy Father," he cried passionately, "shrive me, shrive me! I will fast three days, not even water shall pass my lips. I will spend three whole nights on my bare knees on the ground. I will bear three thousand lashes, anything, anything. Only let the countenance of my God be turned again toward me."

"Tell me, did not the form of the woman seem to disappear miraculously when you made the sign of the cross?"

"Yes, yes, Holy Father; the ground seemed to part and swallow her up, and she disappeared from my sight utterly."

"Ah, I thought as much. Doubtless she descended into the awaiting pit of hell. I shall exorcise the Evil Spirit from you, and you shall have peace. Fear not. All will yet be well."

"A penance, a penance."

The Abbot pondered for a moment. He must name something that would appeal to the penitent as sufficient, yet he dared not permit him to undergo too severe a strain in his evidently exhausted condition. Suddenly his face lit up with an inspiration. "I have heard," he said, "of your good work among the poor. The rustics believe in you and trust you. Go to the cellarer and get bread in plenty and scatter it in great largesse among the poor people" (he could yet make the monastery bear a sweeter name before the coming of the Bishop) "and give it all in the name of the Abbey of St. Dunstan, forgetting not to deliver with it the blessing of the Holy Abbot."

But Annys implored that some real penance be given him. "Besides," he added, "I have no longer the strength to go forth into the world. There will I meet with women. I desire and pray not to see the face of woman more."

The Abbot hid a smile. He had heard like protestations before. He had also known to come later the fervent appeals for permission to depart from the Abbey for a brief space. With the giving of such permissions the Abbot was notoriously generous.

"Well," returned the Abbot, "wait, and for the present remain here and spend the night on your knees on the floor saying four hundred Aves, and in the morning, before your fast is broken, one hundred lashes shall be laid across your back."

"One thousand, Holy Father."

"I have spoken."

Then the Abbot motioned Annys to follow him, and proceeded to the chapel, where they discovered all the members of the monastery assembled. At the entrance, Annys took the oath of fidelity and then prostrated himself while the monks chanted in unison the seven Penitential Psalms.

It would have taken a brazen sinner indeed to remain unmoved during the touching service of receiving the excommunicated one back again into the fold. Annys was deeply stirred. He lay on the floor of the chapel, shaken by long-drawn sobs, while the exquisite modulations of the solemn chant rose and fell about him. In the dim religious light, the monks in their flowing robes, their pallid faces standing out like carved ivory against their black cowls, seemed as spectres from another world looking on the trial of a soul before the Great Judge.

How sure, how unfaltering, was the touch of Holy Church upon the penitent soul. With what fine intuition did the service bring to the soul of the evil-doer the sense of sin, and finally through the whole gamut of human emotions,--terror, faltering hope, faith, despair,--at last, through humiliation and renunciation, lift it with rapture to God.

At first the terror of the Lord's wrath is upon him:--

"O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am withered away."

Then a calmer note is struck, one of confession:--

"I acknowledged my sin unto thee, And mine iniquity have I not hid."

Then the ardent supplication, vibrating with a passionate contrition:--

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me and I shall be clean: Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

* * * * *

Hide thy face from my sins, And blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God."

Then creeps in the note of despair:--

"Hide not thy face from me in the day of my distress. My heart is smitten like grass, and withered. For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping."

Once more the calmness of renunciation and humility:--

"Teach me to do thy will: For thou art my God."

At last bursting forth into the glorious anthem of deliverance:--

"Blessed be the Lord my rock.

* * * * *

I will sing a new song unto thee, O God: Upon a psaltery of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee."

As the last triumphant words of the refrain slowly died away, Annys was conducted to the altar, where he again prostrated himself, while the Abbot offered up a special prayer for his salvation and made the sign of the cross over him. No longer was he under the ban of the Church. He rested on her bosom as a wearied child spent with sobs.

XXII

But the peace that Annys had so fondly hoped for in the monastery was farther away from him than ever. The week that followed was a daily, hourly struggle with the devil within him. With a body scarce kept alive by the scant portion of food which he permitted himself but once a day, in the hopes of conquering the awful sway of the senses, in reality he was innocently making their hold the stronger upon him.

In his wild passion for repentance his once clear vision of the follies of Manichæism left him, and he plunged into the false notion of the monastic world that passions can be killed by killing the body. The faintness caused by lack of food, the cramps in his limbs from constant kneeling, made him unable to sleep. Instead, the nights passed in a kind of waking semi-consciousness, filled with horrible dreams of beautiful women alluringly holding out their arms to him, and then, as he was about to clasp them, changing into dreadful fiends, grinning and spitting fire at him. Or else he thought that women were pressing kisses upon his lips, and faint from the strength of his emotions, his weak body could endure no more. Enraged by the torments, he sought to escape them by castigating himself afresh. As others had done before him, so he tried to forget the existence of his body by making himself exquisitely conscious of every aching, throbbing inch of it.

The methods of monasticism were a failure in subduing the carnal nature of man. Few monks were like St. Poemen, who, when accused of thinking too much of his body, defended his right to wash his feet by declaring that he had learned to kill, not his body, but his passions.

The normal man, when the pangs of hunger assail him, eats his meal and straightway forgets all about the existence of his stomach. For a brief space--at least until the next meal is due--he may concern himself with ideals. The normal man sleeps his eight hours or so, and therefore the need for sleep does not overshadow the hours that he chooses to devote to the work of the Lord. The ascetic who spends his day with back bent and knees pressing the hard ground of a cell, who tries to limit his sleep to four hours and that upon a bare board, and whose diet consists of dry bread and muddy water, is on the fair road to be conquered by that which he fondly thinks he is conquering.

On the seventh night, while his staring, burning eyes looked into the darkness, Annys suddenly became aware of a light of peculiar softness and purity, which appearing particularly bright at a certain spot opposite, filled the entire cell with its beautiful radiance.

He raised himself partially from the board on which he lay, and watched curiously the spot where the light shone brightest. It was not long before he made out the lines of a man robed in the impressive vestments of a Pope, the superb jewelled tiara upon his head.

There was something in the dark, glittering eyes, the haughty mien, the compelling magnetism of the figure that in some mysterious manner made him certain that Gregory the Seventh, the great, indomitable Hildebrand, stood before him.

"Art thou one Robert Annys, poor priest, who departed from Holy Church and went about among the poor stirring up sedition and insurrection?" he asked.

"Nay, Most Holy Father, I am that one Robert Annys who went about from village to village teaching of 'Christ and him crucified.' If I sinned, I sinned only in following too closely the example of Christ, which is the one unpardonable sin of the Church Hierarchical."

The Pope's face darkened, and then a slight smile crept into it. "Hot-headed, and fearless e'en as they told me," he exclaimed. Then he regarded him severely. "Blaspheme not! Art thou he who would boldly proclaim that the marriage of the clergy is not an unholy thing?"

Annys groaned for answer, "Ay, I am he."

"Look, Robert Annys, then, I cannot find it in my heart to cast thee wholly from Grace, and I may yet intercede for thee, because thou art such as err through too great enthusiasm. Tell me concerning these ideas of marriage. Let me hear all from thee, that I misjudge thee not."

"Most Holy Father, I thought that religion should lie in every act of man and not alone in breviaries and masses. I sought to create a priesthood that would understand the people and enter into their lives and needs. And we shall never have that, O Holy Father, until the priests share the people's joys and sorrows. The heart of the priest must beat at the same sight that thrills the heart of the peasant; the smiles of the priest must spring from the same source that gladdens the humblest breast; the tears of the priest must flow from the same anguish that wrings the heart of the lowliest one."

The haughty prelate listened patiently while the young poor priest spoke.

"Ah, my son," he said at last, seeing him pause, "such a vision takes a high hope of Man and a firm belief in his purity of heart. I fear thy faith would not be justified. It takes account of the priest lifting up the average man, but it takes none whatever of the average man drawing down the priest."

Annys opened his lips to speak, but Hildebrand waved one hand to command silence and continued: "Now, my son, in the course of thy wanderings, doubtless thou didst encounter women such as thou hast been fond of describing, who would, through their great purity and perfect sympathy and unselfishness, make the ideal spouse for the priest. Tell me of such women, do they exist?"

"They exist," cried Annys, vehemently, and then his voice failed him. He could not bring himself to speak of Matilda.

The eyes of the Pope blazed. "Ha! I thought as much," he murmured.

Then at last, reluctantly, Annys brought himself to speak of Matilda, her simple charity, her ready self-sacrifice, her tender sympathy and unfailing helpfulness.

"And of course, were Rome to give thee permission to take a wife, it would be this same gentle, helpful, ideal spouse thou wouldst choose?"

Hildebrand watched the face of Annys keenly.

But Annys covered his face with his hands.

A bitter smile crossed the Pope's face. "How? could it be that one could hesitate before all this perfection?"

"Ah, torture me no longer," burst out Annys. "I will confess all."

"No need," answered the Pope, coldly. "I know all. I have followed thy career with a great compassion in my heart. Dost still think that did the Church permit the marriage of the priests, they would all take unto themselves Matildas? Ah, Robert Annys, see how utterly thou didst fall from Grace! I tell thee, thy religion would be one only for saints, but the Holy Catholic Church takes cognizance of the weak and sinful."

Annys strove to reply, but his voice failed him. Then it seemed to him that the figure of the Pope disappeared with a loud noise, and there came the sound of heavy blows upon the door of his cell; he tried to rise and go to the door, but he fell back unconscious.

When he opened his eyes, it was to look into the gentle face of the Bishop of Ely bending solicitously over him.

XXIII

It was indeed the Bishop of Ely who had ordered the door of the cell broken down, and had rescued Annys from what would doubtless have been his last fainting spell. He had succeeded so well in subduing his flesh that at last it was on the point of separating itself entirely from the spirit. The Bishop brought him to with difficulty, and sent him to the infirmary to be nursed back to strength. He did not return to Ely until he saw the tinge of health returning slowly to the young priest's sunken cheeks.

Thomas of Ely had conquered his own weakness of flesh after all, and had taken the journey to the Abbey of St. Dunstan before the wily Abbot had time to receive his answer from the Archbishop. He had dealt summarily with Abbot John and deposed him, refusing to listen to his plea for mercy; for nothing outraged the Bishop so keenly as that a servant of Holy Church should betray his sacred trust. He would have liked to appoint Robert Annys as the Abbot's successor; but as that was utterly impossible for the present, he appointed a most worthy monk who was the unanimous choice of his brethren.

Little by little Robert's strength returned, and his kind adviser led him gently back to the thought that he could again be of use to others. Therein, the Bishop knew, lay the only balm to the tortured heart. He gave a hint to the new Abbot, who gave Annys work to do in the scriptorium, where he could dwell in the calm past, and await the time when he could again venture forth into the world--a world that sorely needed his guiding hand. When he was allowed to leave the infirmary, it was not to go to his solitary cell, but to share the dormitory with the others.

The days and the weeks slipped gently on, the routine of life in the scriptorium endearing itself more and more to the newcomer's heart. The scriptorium at St. Dunstan's was a large chamber which usually held about a dozen persons, but which at times permitted of as many as twenty working together. The Abbot selected the scribes, no one being allowed to enter the room without his permission. It was also the duty of the Abbot to give orders to the Armarius how to portion out the work, a certain task once assigned, no monk being permitted to exchange his portion for another. Boys and novices wrote letters, while older monks were selected to make copies of old books and transcripts of such chronicles as required rigid accuracy. One was specially selected to insert rubrics and design ornamental capitals and other embellishments, while there was a chief artist to whom were left the important designs. The Armarius bound the books in wooden covers to preserve the parchment from mildew and damp. He was really the librarian, keeping a record of all books loaned either to the monks for private study (although he never permitted the rare works to leave the scriptorium), or to sick monks in the infirmary. Every volume had to be returned before the lights were lit, and work ceased in the scriptorium the instant the daylight failed. The manuscripts were too precious to be endangered by artificial light, nor indeed by any kind of heat, so in winter the monks had to work by the hour with their fingers benumbed by the cold. The scribes had no light task. Penned on the margin of an exquisitely written manuscript, there has come down to us from those days at least one pathetic plaint:--

"He who does not know how to write imagines it to be no labor; but though three fingers only hold the pen, the whole body grows weary."