The offer. A short story by Charles Roberts

     Bishop Davies was disappointed that Sister Louise had turned his offer down, disappointed, but not surprised.  He felt that he was pushing his luck with her, his proposed offer wasn’t really indecent, or was it?  He hadn’t reached the stage of leaping to his death in the abyss, yet, as there was still time for her to change her mind.  He realised that it would be a long shot for her to do that, I mean she hadn’t come straight out and said no, what she had said was that she would think about it, which was a good sign, wasn’t it?

In the meantime he would carry on with his daily routine of getting up at five in the morning, showering, to cleanse his earthy body, then an hour of prayer, to cleanse his mind of all the forgotten dreams and overnight feelings, followed by breaking his fast with a simple meal, and then down to the inevitable pile of paperwork and letters received, and replies to write.

He knew that he wouldn’t see Sister Louise again until the weekend when he took the mass at the convent so that was one less thing to worry about, it would also give her a chance to think about things and, hopefully see what an opportunity his offer was.  He had told her that it wouldn’t cost her anything, that he would do all the work and all she had to do was to enjoy it as much as possible.

He had a ham salad for lunch at one o’clock followed by more paperwork and ‘phone calls to various parishes making sure that everything and everybody was all right in mind and body.  Who said that the life of a bishop was an easy one, all right he had a secretary, but they could only do so much, the rest of the work had to be done by him.  The traveling out to parishes, making sure that they didn’t want for anything, talking to parish priests about their problems and suggesting ways to overcome them. 

And always trying to come up with ideas to get more people into the church, which was one of his biggest nightmares.  His predecessor had the same problem with dwindling congregations, and had given the parish priests a free hand to try and draw the people back to the church, the trouble with that approach was that some of the regular church goers weren’t too happy with some of the ideas and complained directly to him, and not to the parish priests who had come up with those ideas, therefore making his job even worse and more complicated.

But what was bothering him the most was his invitation to Sister Louise, was it right and proper to ask the Sister without first asking the Mother Superior.  Now in afterthought he felt guilty for his rather rash proposal to ask Sister Louise, to go, unchaperoned, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with him.