As in a vision, she saw her own mother crying out for the
priest that never came; and she understood that horror of darkness that
falls on one who, knowing what the priest can do, knowing the infinite
consolations which Christ gives, is deprived, when physical death
approaches, of that tremendous strength and comfort. Indeed, she
recognised to the full that when a priest cannot be had, God will save
and forgive without him; yet what would be the heartlessness, to say
nothing of the guilt, of one that would keep him away? For what, except
that this strength and comfort might be at the service of Christ's
flock, had her own life been spent? It was expressly for this that she
had lived on in England when peace and the cloister might be hers
elsewhere; and now that her own life was touched, should she fail?...
The blindness passed like a dream, and her soul rose up again on a wave
of pain and exaltation....
"Wait," she said. "I will go and awaken him, and bid him come down."
V
An hour later, as the first streaks of dawn slit the sky to the
eastwards over the moors, she stood with Janet and Mistress Alice and
Robin by the hall fire.
She had said not a word to any of the struggle she had passed through.
She had gone upstairs resolutely and knocked on his door till he had
answered, and then whispered, "The letter is come.... I will have food
ready"; slipping the letter beneath the door.
Then she had sent Janet to awaken a couple of men that slept over the
stables; and bid them saddle two horses at once; and herself had gone to
the buttery to make ready a meal.
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