“My lord, there was a girl of this parish?Eluned?very beautiful. Not like other girls, wild as a hare. Everyone knew her. God knows she never harmed a soul but herself, the creature! My lord, she could not say no to men. Time and again she went with this one or that, but always she came back, as wild returning as going, in tears, and made her confession, and swore amendment. And meant it! But she never could keep it, a lad would look at her and sigh
Father Adam always took her back, confessed her, gave her penance, and afterwards absolution. He knew she could not help it. And she as kind a creature to man or child or beast as ever breathed?too kind!”
The abbot sat still and silent, foreseeing what was to come.
“Last month she bore a child. When she was delivered and recovered she came, as she always came, mad with shame, to make her confession. He refused her countenance. He told her she had broken every promise of amendment, and so she had, but still
He would not give her penance, because he would not take her word, and so he refused her absolution. And when she came humbly to enter the church and hear Mass, he turned her away, and shut the door against her. Publicly and loudly he did it, in front of all.”
There was a long and deep silence before the abbot asked, perforce: “What became of her?” For clearly she was already in the past, an outcast shade.
“They took her out of the mill-pond, my lord. By good fortune she had drifted down to the brook, and those who drew her out were from the town, and did not know her, so they took her with them back to their own parish, and the priest of Saint Chad’s has buried her. It was not clear how she came to drown, it was taken for accident.”
Though of course everyone knew it was none. That was clear in look and voice. Despair is deadly sin. Then what of the record of those who deal out despair?
“Leave all this in my hands,” said Abbot Radulfus. “I will speak to Father Ailnoth.”
There was no trace of guilt, trepidation or want of assurance in the long, austere, handsome face that confronted Abbot Radulfus across the desk in his parlour, after Mass.
The man stood quite erect and still, with hands folded at ease and face invincibly calm.
“Father Abbot, if I may speak freely, the souls of my cure had been long neglected, to their own ruin. The garden is full of weeds, they starve and strangle the good grain. I am pledged to do whatever is needed to bring a clean crop, and so I must and will endeavour. I can do no other. The child spared will be the man spoiled. As for the matter of Eadwin’s headland, it has been shown me that I have removed his boundary stone. That was in error, and the error has been made good. I have replaced the stone and drawn my own bounds short of it. I would not possess myself of one hand’s breadth of land that belonged to another man.”
And that was surely truth. Not a hand’s breadth of land nor a penny in money. Nor let go of one or the other that belonged to him. The bare razor of justice was his measure.
“I am less concerned for a yard of headland,” said the abbot drily,”than for matters that touch a man’s being even more nearly. Your man Aelgar was born free, is free man now, and so are his uncle and cousin, and if they take steps to assert it there will be no man query it hereafter. They assumed such customary duties as they do by way of payment for a piece of land, there is no disfranchisement, no more than when a man pays in money.”
“So I have found by enquiry,” said Ailnoth imperturb-ably, “and have said as much to him.”
“Then that was properly done. But it would have been better to enquire first and accuse afterwards.”
“My lord, no just man should resent the appeal to justice. I am new among these people, I heard of the kinsmen’s land, that it was held by villein service. It was my duty to find out the truth, and it was honest to speak first to the man himself.”
Which was true enough, if not kindly, and it seemed he had acknowledged the truth against himself, once established, with the same steely integrity. But what is to be done with such a man, among the common, fallible run of humanity? Radulfus went on to graver matters.
“The child that was born to the man Centwin and his wife, and lived barely an hour
The man came to you, urging haste, since the baby was very feeble and likely to die. You did not go with him to give it Christian baptism, and since your ministration came too late, as I hear, you denied the infant burial in consecrated ground. Why did you not go at once when you were called, and with all haste?”
“Because I had but just begun the office. My lord, I never have broken off my devotions according to my vows, and never will, for any cause, though it were my own death. Until I had completed the act of worship I could not go. As soon as it was ended, I did go. I could not know the child would die so soon. But if I had known, still I could not have cut short the worship I owe.”
“There are other obligations you owe no less,” said Radulfus with some asperity. “There are times when it is needful to make a choice between duties, and yours, I think, is first to the souls of those within your care. You chose rather the perfection of your own personal worship, and consigned the child to a grave outside the pale. Was that well done?”
“My lord,” said Ailnoth, unflinching, and with the high and smouldering gleam of self-justification in his black eyes, “as I hold, it was. I will not go aside from the least iota of my service where the sacred office is concerned. My own soul and all others must bow to that.”
“Even the soul of the most innocent, new come into the world, the most defenceless of God’s creatures?”
“My lord, you know well that the letter of divine law does not permit the burial of unchristened creatures within the pale. I keep the rules by which I am bound. I can do no other. God will know where to find Centwin’s babe, if his mercy extends to him, in holy ground or base.”
After its merciless fashion it was a good answer. The abbot pondered, eyeing the stony, assured face.
“The letter of the rule is much, I grant you, but the spirit is more. And you might well have jeopardised your own soul to ensure that of a newborn child. An office interrupted can be completed without sin, if the cause be urgent enough. And there is also the matter of the girl Eluned, who went to her death after?I say after, mark, I do not say because!?you turned her away from the church. It is a grave thing to refuse confession and penance even to the greatest sinner.”
“Father Abbot,” said Ailnoth, with the first hot spurt of passion, immovable in righteousness, “where there is no penitence there can be neither penance nor absolution. The woman had pleaded penitence and vowed amendment
