Story
My parents say this is too Victorian to be any good; I guess they're probably right.
Read it anyway, if you want.
And be aware that posting it in LJ cuts out almost all my indents, so don't bother correcting
The Epiphany
(Hugh Goldring)
It was the week before my 17th birthday, when the lilacs blossomed along the cobbled path leading up to our house, when Father Alistair Murray became our parish priest. I remember - indeed, I could scare forget - that first service he gave.
The old priest, Father Regan, had been a stern old fellow with a fleecy white beard and a tendency to spit when he roared from the altar; dire warnings of the burning coals and hungry flames which awaited all unrepentant sinners. The entire congregation, from Jim Corrie the village mayor, to Zeke Cameron the banker, right down to my three rotten wee brothers, felt the effects of these bellowings. They would rise stiffly out of the pews when mass had ended, drag their frightened bodies down the aisles and thank God when they had exited the church that Father Regan had released them from his clutches.
During the workweek, mind, Father Regan was no less of a terror. At seminary school, back in the days before electric light and personal hygiene, he had picked up the notion that it was a priest’s duty to visit his congregation. Thus, he was seldom in his study at the church, but went about the town in a holy fury.
A favourite habit of Father Regan was to invite himself over for dinner, and lead the lucky family he selected for this privilege in grace. Inevitably, grace was a word which only applied in the most technical sense. The meal’s prayer grew to a detailed listing of various spiritual shortcomings, both real and imagined, of the family visited by Father Regan. When grace was done, Father Regan would tuck heartily into the meal, drinking as much wine as his swollen old belly could stand, then stagger home with a quick sign-of-the-cross and a very red face.
It may come as a surprise to some to learn that when the old Father finally went to join his ecclesiastical superior in the heavens, no doubt to drink his wine and scold him for his shortcomings, there was considerable relief in our little town of Socksford. And, when his replacement stepped off the rusty old steam engine from Alexandria, the very sight of him sent rumors rippling through the town.
Father Murray was neither particularly old, nor curmudgeonly. In fact, he was exceptionally - some of the older folk said inappropriately - young, and rather too handsome for a priest. He wore his dark hair in waves, down past his ears, and his eyes shone blue like Lake Ontario on the rare sunny day. Rather than the conspicuous wooden cross which had ever adorned Father Regan’s chest, Alistair Murray wore a little gold cross - an icon for a more refined sort of folk.
So it was that in our little granite church, the week before my 17th birthday, the whole church was positively abuzz with gossip and murmured blasphemies. Father Murray, looking handsome in his clerical vestments, came up the aisle in the company of little Jamie MacLeod the altar boy, and my brother Callum holding the cross. Father Murray cut such an admirable figure that my brother, who was normally Pan come down to earth to be a nuisance among decent folk (as my father used to say), kept his eyes unswervingly on the priest, and nearly stumbled a couple of times.
Father Murray took his place behind the altar, and delivered the service. Every moment of the proceedings stunned and delighted the congregation, who had never known a thing like it. His readings emphasized fatherly affection of God, and of Jesus’ love for the poor and meek. Not a word was breathed about the scorching heat of the pit, nor a syllable uttered on the shortcomings of the congregation. When it came time for the sermon, he advised us in accordance with the Gospel that we should do well to care for the poor, the meek, and those other worthies selected for blessing in the Beatitudes. Finally, in closing, the good Father had prepared a few words to begin his service in Socksford.
“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to celebrate the power of Christ, and His importance in our lives. It is important we understand this time, as I begin my voyage in God with all of you, as a time of renewal. I did not know Father Regan, but I understand his time in this community was long, and his connections ran deep. As an outsider, I make no pretense at being able to duplicate his results, but I will do what I can for this community. For those parishioners wishing to help in the Lord’s work, please stay behind and we may discuss what God can do for the people of Socksford.”
Naturally, there was not a soul who left the church when Father Murray had finished speaking.
*** *** ***
With the eager help of his congregation, Father Murray set right to doing God’s work. He went first to Duncan Lennox, the carpenter. Together they found that Jesus had concluded that it would be much to Socksford’s benefit to construct a shelter for vagrants. Shortly a price was arranged, which both Duncan and Alistair Murray would publicly proclaim to have been much to the benefit of themselves, and a great comment on the generosity of the other. From sunrise to sunset of every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the pair of them and some well-meaning fellows including my father Ewan, would be sawing and hammering and hefting timber to and fro on the dusty lot across from the church. To the infinite scandal of the fusspot old women who sat out on the verandah of the town’s only hotel, Father Murray did it all very shirtless. The subtle rippling of his taut sinews under his tanned flesh caught the eye of many a hopeful young maiden when he first commenced the work. These unfortunate girls would have some sense knocked into them by their mothers, who would cuff them sharp over the head and say
“Mind your eyes, that’s Father Murray.” The girls would feel properly abashed for lusting after a man of God, and the good priest would continue his labours oblivious of the attentions they paid.
When the vagrant shelter was up serving those unfortunates and destitutes of our township, to say nothing of those drunks who had been turned out by their wives - for there was to be no striking a woman in a Scots household, you may rest assured - Father Murray set to work on a library.
At its inception, the library had seemed unlikely to be realized. The coffers of Saint Andrew’s had been all but emptied, and the good Father had blisters on each of his digits. But when he had mentioned it in passing over a cup of mulled cider at the Edinburgh Hotel, the town’s Presbyterian Minister had wise-cracked quite rudely that with the number of books that the Scarlet Woman of Rome kept out of reach of her children, it would be a fine collection of faerie tales to do with saints and printed papal bulls. This injured Father Murray grievously, and out of a sense of gallantry on behalf of Mother Church, more than any sort of personal pride to which a lesser man might have succumbed, he vowed to ensure the library’s construction.
But where was the money to be found? Of course Father Murray had the answers. First, to the great shock of the congregation, was a voluntary cut in his pay. Next, as the pale shroud of winter settled over our cold, dead farms and shops, he wrote letter after letter which was borne straight to Scotland, where Father Murray had befriended the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. For the most part, these letters were pleasantly salutary, bearing news of his parish and a mingling of reminisces and wry jokes. Slowly, however, there worked into these texts a polite suggestion that some money might be sent to Socksford to procure some books for a local library. A man of some means, the Archbishop happily agreed to indulge his dear protégé… if and when a building was constructed to house them.
Was Father Murray capable of providing such a building? He was confident he could, and long nights of prayer on the snowy steps of our wee kirk delivered a heavenly response. So it was that, as the warm air of an Upper Canada brought an end to winter’s frigid orthodoxy, Father Murray first hefted a hammer and tongs and exposed himself to the blazing heat of the forge - so much like Father Regan’s hell - as my father’s apprentice.
*** *** ***
It goes without saying that my father paid Father Murray as well as we could afford. Likely he would have beggared us to pay him better if my mother had not pursued him about the kitchen, wielding a rolling pin with more menace than I care to recall, and shrieking about her children starving in the streets for the sake of Great Expectations. Where the sense lay in my family, my mother was certain she knew, but perhaps the better half of it was my father for knowing better than to quarrel with her.
He was a hard and diligent worker, and when he was not preparing stew for the vagrants at the shelter, preparing his invariably eloquent sermons, or spending one of his long hours cloistered away in prayer, he could be found by the forge. Within a month he could make most anything made to order, although he refused to be involved in the forging of sabres for the town militia. He did, however, happily receive one to be beaten into a ploughshare for a farmer who had thought better of militia service.
Nearly eighteen and still unmarried, I would sit in the yard between forge and home, knitting and minding the boys as they played in the field across the way. Often, when the heat of the forge grew unbearable, Father Murray would come out to the yard and draw solace from the cool, stone depths of our well.
“I could make horseshoes for your father till I was older than Abraham, but I do hope the Lord finds softer work for me soon.” He complained on one such day, when my brothers were off causing trouble in town and I was alone with the knitting.
“It’s a good thing you’re doing for the town, Father Murray.” I told him, feeling the statement quite obvious and flushing with embarrassment. Perhaps seminary school had left him ignorant of women, for he scarcely seemed to notice.
“I’ve not heard a confession from you since New Year’s, Mairi. Why is that?”
“I should think,” I demurred “That it would be because I have had nothing to confess.”
“Faith, dear girl, conceit is a sin all its own! And it is conceit to think yourself innocent - only God is without sin, in this flawed but lovely world he made for us.” I felt slighted by this, and so went back to my knitting. But for all my resentment, he was the priest, so on Sunday after mass I found myself in the little confessional.
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.” I whispered, through the velvet curtain and polished latticework which separated me from the good priest. “I have been prideful, and imagined myself more virtuous than I rightly am. I have been wrathful, striking my brothers when they play amongst one another. And at times I am slothful, putting down the knitting and dreaming idly of a future with some handsome man.” As the words poured out of my mouth, I felt succourous salvation wash over me.
“No sin is so minor as to escape the attention of God, child. Your confession brings forgiveness for the infinite compassion of Christ.” He spoke in a soft, patient voice, clean of malicious rebuke.
“What of my penance, Father?” I asked, surprised to be so swiftly excused.
“Pray, as you always do, and God will fill you with the patience and wisdom required.”
“Is that all?” I asked, an edge in my voice. Was I so quickly redeemed.
“No one is without fault, Mairi. Who am I, a man made in God’s image, to dictate penance to so delightful and sweetly beautiful a creature as you?” A sigh came through the curtain. “Every night, I pray in the little walled garden behind the vestry. I pray for the wisdom to pass judgement. I haven’t found it yet.” There was a rather awkward commotion from the other side of the confessional, and it was clear that he had left.
What could I do? That night I knitted till my thumbs blistered bright red, and when the grandfather clock in our kitchen struck midnight, I donned my slippers and wrapped my only floral bonnet about my troublesome red curls. Out the front door I darted, tip-toeing along the cobblestones, quiet as the Edinburgh on Sunday morning, down the way to our church.
A few candles flickered in the upstair windows of the vagrant’s shelter across the way. Weaving through the shadows, I came to the doors of the church. While it had been Father Regan’s practice to lock the kirk up tight every evening when he staggered home to bed, and so far as I knew Father Murray had not changed his policy, the door was open a crack. In I slipped, closing it behind me. Down past the pews, illuminated by candlesticks kept burning through the night as a memory from the time when churches were sanctuaries. Into the little door behind the altar that led to the vestry. Through the sacramental ornaments and adornments of religious ceremony, and oh! Here was the open door to the little walled garden behind the vestry.
Out I went, into the pale shafts of moonlight which cut across my skirts and delighted me by flattering my bosom with a gentle tickle which had heretofore been untouched even by the elements, for I normally wore a shawl about my chest.
The garden was too pretty to belong in Socksford. I had never before laid eyes upon it, for it was intended to be for men of the cloth alone. Primrose climbed the walls, while daffodils hung carelessly on their stalks, their bright saffron faces made pale by the light of the moon. A cherry tree, still in bloom, blossomed in one corner, with the whole scene sequestered by walls of patterened brick, too high to see over.
In one darkened corner of the garden, uncaressed by pale lunar fingers, knelt Father Murray. He had not yet noticed me, so I approached. What did he do out here, in the cool air of a May evening, on his knees pleading with a God on whose behalf he had been ordained to speak?
My foot crushed a dry leaf, and its crumpling startled him. Luminous blue eyes now open wide, he rose quickly to his feet and gripped me by the shoulders.
“Mary Rose, what are you doing here?” If only I had known the answer myself! But there is no use in hoping idly for things which might never be.
“You said you came to pray, and I wanted to know. What could a man so kind, so decent, so devout in his service to God, have to repent?” He hung his head for a moment, but brought it up slowly, his eyes meeting mine with some emotion in them I could not understand.
“I have prayed as well, Mary, in hopes of discovering some fault. Nothing has made itself apparent… until now?” What did he mean? Oh, how little I understood then.
“Am I so fortunate, to be present on the night of an epiphany for so perfect a servant of God?” I asked, the very face of demure femininity.
“No, Mary. You are the epiphany.” He breathed, simply. Then, with a tender hand hardened by my father’s forge, he drew back my bonnet and wrapped his arms around me. Speechless, I gazed into his eyes and stood in idle wonderment as his face drew nearer mine, and our lips met. Tentative at first, for I imagine that neither he nor I had ever kissed before, but soon with feeling and then passion. His hands grasped my back, while mine caressed his face, and neither strayed to wicked places. How long we kissed, I couldn’t say. But when we stopped, at last, my lips were numb and I was much disoriented by the prospect of doing some other thing than kissing him. It had grown to be my entire reality, undisrupted by petty externalities.
“I have found my sin, Mary. To kiss you is to know temptation, to know longing, to live as a man does. How happy I am for that! Now at last I can fulfil my duty as priest to this idyllic town.”
“I will never tell a soul of tonight!” I declared, anxious to protect my hero’s virtue and position.
“Nor I; thought I would be indebted forever if you would meet me here some nights. There is in this feeling of failure a consummation of my humanity, a fulfilment of a part of myself I cannot deny and be but a hypocrite! Would you, Mary? I cannot marry you, though I dearly wish I could. But to kiss you, it is not such a sin that it keeps me from my duties.”
And of course, I agreed.
Years passed, and my father wondered at my long singularity. But I nurtured and minded my brothers as they became men, and minded their children when they were fathers. When Alistair persuaded the bishop that Socksford would benefit from a nunnery, alongside the vagrants shelter and the fine granite library the masons had made for him, I joined as Mother Superior. My lifelong chastity and exceptional devotion to the service of the parish priest were cited as reason for this exceptional leap in stature, though no one guessed but half of half the truth.
And so, although there was no blood shed, no enemies vanquished, and no joining of flesh between Alistair and I, we all lived happily ever after.
- Sister Mary Rose, Mother Superior.
July 1st, 1930.
Read it anyway, if you want.
And be aware that posting it in LJ cuts out almost all my indents, so don't bother correcting
The Epiphany
(Hugh Goldring)
It was the week before my 17th birthday, when the lilacs blossomed along the cobbled path leading up to our house, when Father Alistair Murray became our parish priest. I remember - indeed, I could scare forget - that first service he gave.
The old priest, Father Regan, had been a stern old fellow with a fleecy white beard and a tendency to spit when he roared from the altar; dire warnings of the burning coals and hungry flames which awaited all unrepentant sinners. The entire congregation, from Jim Corrie the village mayor, to Zeke Cameron the banker, right down to my three rotten wee brothers, felt the effects of these bellowings. They would rise stiffly out of the pews when mass had ended, drag their frightened bodies down the aisles and thank God when they had exited the church that Father Regan had released them from his clutches.
During the workweek, mind, Father Regan was no less of a terror. At seminary school, back in the days before electric light and personal hygiene, he had picked up the notion that it was a priest’s duty to visit his congregation. Thus, he was seldom in his study at the church, but went about the town in a holy fury.
A favourite habit of Father Regan was to invite himself over for dinner, and lead the lucky family he selected for this privilege in grace. Inevitably, grace was a word which only applied in the most technical sense. The meal’s prayer grew to a detailed listing of various spiritual shortcomings, both real and imagined, of the family visited by Father Regan. When grace was done, Father Regan would tuck heartily into the meal, drinking as much wine as his swollen old belly could stand, then stagger home with a quick sign-of-the-cross and a very red face.
It may come as a surprise to some to learn that when the old Father finally went to join his ecclesiastical superior in the heavens, no doubt to drink his wine and scold him for his shortcomings, there was considerable relief in our little town of Socksford. And, when his replacement stepped off the rusty old steam engine from Alexandria, the very sight of him sent rumors rippling through the town.
Father Murray was neither particularly old, nor curmudgeonly. In fact, he was exceptionally - some of the older folk said inappropriately - young, and rather too handsome for a priest. He wore his dark hair in waves, down past his ears, and his eyes shone blue like Lake Ontario on the rare sunny day. Rather than the conspicuous wooden cross which had ever adorned Father Regan’s chest, Alistair Murray wore a little gold cross - an icon for a more refined sort of folk.
So it was that in our little granite church, the week before my 17th birthday, the whole church was positively abuzz with gossip and murmured blasphemies. Father Murray, looking handsome in his clerical vestments, came up the aisle in the company of little Jamie MacLeod the altar boy, and my brother Callum holding the cross. Father Murray cut such an admirable figure that my brother, who was normally Pan come down to earth to be a nuisance among decent folk (as my father used to say), kept his eyes unswervingly on the priest, and nearly stumbled a couple of times.
Father Murray took his place behind the altar, and delivered the service. Every moment of the proceedings stunned and delighted the congregation, who had never known a thing like it. His readings emphasized fatherly affection of God, and of Jesus’ love for the poor and meek. Not a word was breathed about the scorching heat of the pit, nor a syllable uttered on the shortcomings of the congregation. When it came time for the sermon, he advised us in accordance with the Gospel that we should do well to care for the poor, the meek, and those other worthies selected for blessing in the Beatitudes. Finally, in closing, the good Father had prepared a few words to begin his service in Socksford.
“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to celebrate the power of Christ, and His importance in our lives. It is important we understand this time, as I begin my voyage in God with all of you, as a time of renewal. I did not know Father Regan, but I understand his time in this community was long, and his connections ran deep. As an outsider, I make no pretense at being able to duplicate his results, but I will do what I can for this community. For those parishioners wishing to help in the Lord’s work, please stay behind and we may discuss what God can do for the people of Socksford.”
Naturally, there was not a soul who left the church when Father Murray had finished speaking.
*** *** ***
With the eager help of his congregation, Father Murray set right to doing God’s work. He went first to Duncan Lennox, the carpenter. Together they found that Jesus had concluded that it would be much to Socksford’s benefit to construct a shelter for vagrants. Shortly a price was arranged, which both Duncan and Alistair Murray would publicly proclaim to have been much to the benefit of themselves, and a great comment on the generosity of the other. From sunrise to sunset of every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the pair of them and some well-meaning fellows including my father Ewan, would be sawing and hammering and hefting timber to and fro on the dusty lot across from the church. To the infinite scandal of the fusspot old women who sat out on the verandah of the town’s only hotel, Father Murray did it all very shirtless. The subtle rippling of his taut sinews under his tanned flesh caught the eye of many a hopeful young maiden when he first commenced the work. These unfortunate girls would have some sense knocked into them by their mothers, who would cuff them sharp over the head and say
“Mind your eyes, that’s Father Murray.” The girls would feel properly abashed for lusting after a man of God, and the good priest would continue his labours oblivious of the attentions they paid.
When the vagrant shelter was up serving those unfortunates and destitutes of our township, to say nothing of those drunks who had been turned out by their wives - for there was to be no striking a woman in a Scots household, you may rest assured - Father Murray set to work on a library.
At its inception, the library had seemed unlikely to be realized. The coffers of Saint Andrew’s had been all but emptied, and the good Father had blisters on each of his digits. But when he had mentioned it in passing over a cup of mulled cider at the Edinburgh Hotel, the town’s Presbyterian Minister had wise-cracked quite rudely that with the number of books that the Scarlet Woman of Rome kept out of reach of her children, it would be a fine collection of faerie tales to do with saints and printed papal bulls. This injured Father Murray grievously, and out of a sense of gallantry on behalf of Mother Church, more than any sort of personal pride to which a lesser man might have succumbed, he vowed to ensure the library’s construction.
But where was the money to be found? Of course Father Murray had the answers. First, to the great shock of the congregation, was a voluntary cut in his pay. Next, as the pale shroud of winter settled over our cold, dead farms and shops, he wrote letter after letter which was borne straight to Scotland, where Father Murray had befriended the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. For the most part, these letters were pleasantly salutary, bearing news of his parish and a mingling of reminisces and wry jokes. Slowly, however, there worked into these texts a polite suggestion that some money might be sent to Socksford to procure some books for a local library. A man of some means, the Archbishop happily agreed to indulge his dear protégé… if and when a building was constructed to house them.
Was Father Murray capable of providing such a building? He was confident he could, and long nights of prayer on the snowy steps of our wee kirk delivered a heavenly response. So it was that, as the warm air of an Upper Canada brought an end to winter’s frigid orthodoxy, Father Murray first hefted a hammer and tongs and exposed himself to the blazing heat of the forge - so much like Father Regan’s hell - as my father’s apprentice.
*** *** ***
It goes without saying that my father paid Father Murray as well as we could afford. Likely he would have beggared us to pay him better if my mother had not pursued him about the kitchen, wielding a rolling pin with more menace than I care to recall, and shrieking about her children starving in the streets for the sake of Great Expectations. Where the sense lay in my family, my mother was certain she knew, but perhaps the better half of it was my father for knowing better than to quarrel with her.
He was a hard and diligent worker, and when he was not preparing stew for the vagrants at the shelter, preparing his invariably eloquent sermons, or spending one of his long hours cloistered away in prayer, he could be found by the forge. Within a month he could make most anything made to order, although he refused to be involved in the forging of sabres for the town militia. He did, however, happily receive one to be beaten into a ploughshare for a farmer who had thought better of militia service.
Nearly eighteen and still unmarried, I would sit in the yard between forge and home, knitting and minding the boys as they played in the field across the way. Often, when the heat of the forge grew unbearable, Father Murray would come out to the yard and draw solace from the cool, stone depths of our well.
“I could make horseshoes for your father till I was older than Abraham, but I do hope the Lord finds softer work for me soon.” He complained on one such day, when my brothers were off causing trouble in town and I was alone with the knitting.
“It’s a good thing you’re doing for the town, Father Murray.” I told him, feeling the statement quite obvious and flushing with embarrassment. Perhaps seminary school had left him ignorant of women, for he scarcely seemed to notice.
“I’ve not heard a confession from you since New Year’s, Mairi. Why is that?”
“I should think,” I demurred “That it would be because I have had nothing to confess.”
“Faith, dear girl, conceit is a sin all its own! And it is conceit to think yourself innocent - only God is without sin, in this flawed but lovely world he made for us.” I felt slighted by this, and so went back to my knitting. But for all my resentment, he was the priest, so on Sunday after mass I found myself in the little confessional.
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.” I whispered, through the velvet curtain and polished latticework which separated me from the good priest. “I have been prideful, and imagined myself more virtuous than I rightly am. I have been wrathful, striking my brothers when they play amongst one another. And at times I am slothful, putting down the knitting and dreaming idly of a future with some handsome man.” As the words poured out of my mouth, I felt succourous salvation wash over me.
“No sin is so minor as to escape the attention of God, child. Your confession brings forgiveness for the infinite compassion of Christ.” He spoke in a soft, patient voice, clean of malicious rebuke.
“What of my penance, Father?” I asked, surprised to be so swiftly excused.
“Pray, as you always do, and God will fill you with the patience and wisdom required.”
“Is that all?” I asked, an edge in my voice. Was I so quickly redeemed.
“No one is without fault, Mairi. Who am I, a man made in God’s image, to dictate penance to so delightful and sweetly beautiful a creature as you?” A sigh came through the curtain. “Every night, I pray in the little walled garden behind the vestry. I pray for the wisdom to pass judgement. I haven’t found it yet.” There was a rather awkward commotion from the other side of the confessional, and it was clear that he had left.
What could I do? That night I knitted till my thumbs blistered bright red, and when the grandfather clock in our kitchen struck midnight, I donned my slippers and wrapped my only floral bonnet about my troublesome red curls. Out the front door I darted, tip-toeing along the cobblestones, quiet as the Edinburgh on Sunday morning, down the way to our church.
A few candles flickered in the upstair windows of the vagrant’s shelter across the way. Weaving through the shadows, I came to the doors of the church. While it had been Father Regan’s practice to lock the kirk up tight every evening when he staggered home to bed, and so far as I knew Father Murray had not changed his policy, the door was open a crack. In I slipped, closing it behind me. Down past the pews, illuminated by candlesticks kept burning through the night as a memory from the time when churches were sanctuaries. Into the little door behind the altar that led to the vestry. Through the sacramental ornaments and adornments of religious ceremony, and oh! Here was the open door to the little walled garden behind the vestry.
Out I went, into the pale shafts of moonlight which cut across my skirts and delighted me by flattering my bosom with a gentle tickle which had heretofore been untouched even by the elements, for I normally wore a shawl about my chest.
The garden was too pretty to belong in Socksford. I had never before laid eyes upon it, for it was intended to be for men of the cloth alone. Primrose climbed the walls, while daffodils hung carelessly on their stalks, their bright saffron faces made pale by the light of the moon. A cherry tree, still in bloom, blossomed in one corner, with the whole scene sequestered by walls of patterened brick, too high to see over.
In one darkened corner of the garden, uncaressed by pale lunar fingers, knelt Father Murray. He had not yet noticed me, so I approached. What did he do out here, in the cool air of a May evening, on his knees pleading with a God on whose behalf he had been ordained to speak?
My foot crushed a dry leaf, and its crumpling startled him. Luminous blue eyes now open wide, he rose quickly to his feet and gripped me by the shoulders.
“Mary Rose, what are you doing here?” If only I had known the answer myself! But there is no use in hoping idly for things which might never be.
“You said you came to pray, and I wanted to know. What could a man so kind, so decent, so devout in his service to God, have to repent?” He hung his head for a moment, but brought it up slowly, his eyes meeting mine with some emotion in them I could not understand.
“I have prayed as well, Mary, in hopes of discovering some fault. Nothing has made itself apparent… until now?” What did he mean? Oh, how little I understood then.
“Am I so fortunate, to be present on the night of an epiphany for so perfect a servant of God?” I asked, the very face of demure femininity.
“No, Mary. You are the epiphany.” He breathed, simply. Then, with a tender hand hardened by my father’s forge, he drew back my bonnet and wrapped his arms around me. Speechless, I gazed into his eyes and stood in idle wonderment as his face drew nearer mine, and our lips met. Tentative at first, for I imagine that neither he nor I had ever kissed before, but soon with feeling and then passion. His hands grasped my back, while mine caressed his face, and neither strayed to wicked places. How long we kissed, I couldn’t say. But when we stopped, at last, my lips were numb and I was much disoriented by the prospect of doing some other thing than kissing him. It had grown to be my entire reality, undisrupted by petty externalities.
“I have found my sin, Mary. To kiss you is to know temptation, to know longing, to live as a man does. How happy I am for that! Now at last I can fulfil my duty as priest to this idyllic town.”
“I will never tell a soul of tonight!” I declared, anxious to protect my hero’s virtue and position.
“Nor I; thought I would be indebted forever if you would meet me here some nights. There is in this feeling of failure a consummation of my humanity, a fulfilment of a part of myself I cannot deny and be but a hypocrite! Would you, Mary? I cannot marry you, though I dearly wish I could. But to kiss you, it is not such a sin that it keeps me from my duties.”
And of course, I agreed.
Years passed, and my father wondered at my long singularity. But I nurtured and minded my brothers as they became men, and minded their children when they were fathers. When Alistair persuaded the bishop that Socksford would benefit from a nunnery, alongside the vagrants shelter and the fine granite library the masons had made for him, I joined as Mother Superior. My lifelong chastity and exceptional devotion to the service of the parish priest were cited as reason for this exceptional leap in stature, though no one guessed but half of half the truth.
And so, although there was no blood shed, no enemies vanquished, and no joining of flesh between Alistair and I, we all lived happily ever after.
- Sister Mary Rose, Mother Superior.
July 1st, 1930.