CHAPTER II
(I)
It was three weeks later that the Benedictines took formal possession of Westminster Abbey, and simultaneously that Pontifical High Mass was sung in the University churches of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, to mark the inauguration of their new life.
Monsignor Masterman was appointed to attend upon the Cardinals in the Abbey; and as he awoke that morning, it seemed to him once more as if he were living in a dream of strange and intoxicating unreality. Everywhere in the house, as he passed along the corridors, as he gave and received last instructions before starting, there seemed the same tension of expectancy. Finally, as he went up to the Cardinals' rooms to announce the start, he found the two prelates, both in their scarlet, sitting in silence, looking out over the crowded silent streets.
He bowed at the door without speaking, and then, turning, led the way.
As they came down to the door where the horsed State carriages were waiting, for a moment the wall and the avenue of faces, in front and to right and left, struck him almost with a sense of hostility. A murmur that was almost a roar greeted the gleam of scarlet as the Cardinals came out; then silence again, and a surge of down-bent heads as the two raised their hands in blessing.
Monsignor himself sat facing the Cardinals in the glass coach, as at a foot-pace the six white horses, with grooms and postillions, drew them slowly past the long length of the Cathedral, round to the right, and into Victoria Street. There he drew a long breath, for he had never seen or dreamed of such a sight as that which met him. From end to end of the side street, and in the direction of Old Victoria Station, across the roadway as well, from every window and from every roof, looked a silent sea of faces, that broke into sound and rippling motion as the last carriage came in sight. He had not realized till this moment the tremendous appeal to the imagination which this formal restoration of the old Abbey to the sons of its original founders and occupants made to the popular mind. Here again there had been working in his mind an undefined sense that the Church had her interests, and the nation hers. He had not understood that the two were identified once more; and identified, too, to a degree which had perhaps never before been reached. Even in medieval days there had been crises and even periods during which the secular power stood on one side and the sacred on another; as when Henry had faced St. Thomas, with the nation torn in factions behind the two champions. But the lesson, it seemed, had been learned at last; Caesar had learned that God was his ultimate sanction: and Church and nation, now perhaps for the first time, stood together as soul and body united in one personality.
If Victoria Street suggested such a thought as this, Parliament Square drove it home. As the coach drew up at the west door of the Abbey, and Monsignor stepped out with his robes about him, he heard, like a ground-bass to the ecstatic pealing of the bells overhead, the great roar of welcome roll out over the wide space, reverberate back from Westminster Hall and the Government Buildings opposite, and die down into heart-shaking silence again, as the vermilion flash was seen at the Abbey doors. The great space was filled in every foot with a crowd that was of one heart and soul in its welcome of this formal act of restitution.
Within, the monks waited, headed by their abbot, in a wide circle of some hundred persons, in the extreme end of the nave about the door. The proper formalities were carried out; and the seculars, led by the Cardinals, passed up the enormous church, between the tapestries that hung from every pillar, to the music of the Ecce Sacerdos magnus.
The old monuments were gone, of course—removed to St. Paul's—and for the first time for nearly three hundred years it was possible to see the monastic character of the church as its builders had designed it. Over the screen hung now again the Great Rood with Mary and John; and the altars of the Holy Cross and St. Benedict stood on either side of the choir-gates.
And so they waited, the Cardinals in their thrones beside the high-altar, and the man who had lost his memory beside them; while the organ pealed out continuously overhead and endless footsteps went to and fro over the carpeted ways and the open stone spaces of the transepts. Once more upon this man, so bewildered by this new world in which he found himself, descended a flood of memories and half-perceived images. He looked up to the far-off vaulted roof and the lantern beneath the central tower; he looked down the long row of untenanted stalls; across the transepts, clean and white again now as at the beginning, filled from end to end across the floor with the white of surplices and the dusky colours of half the religious habits of the world; he caught here and there the gleam of candle-flames and gold and carving from the new altars, set back again, so far as might be, in their old stations; and again it seemed to him that he had lived in some world of the imagination, as if he saw things which kings and prophets had desired to see and had not seen unless in visions of faith and hope that never found fulfilment.
He whispered softly to himself sometimes; old forgotten names and scenes and fragments came back. It seemed to him as if in some other life he had once stood here—surely there in that transept—a stranger and an outcast—watching a liturgy which was strange to him, listening to music, lovely indeed to the ear, yet wholly foreign in this home of monks and prayer. Surely great statues had stood before them—statesmen in perukes who silently declaimed secular rhetoric in the house of God, swooning women, impossible pagan personifications of grief, medallions, heathen wreaths, and broken columns. Yet here as he looked there was nothing but the decent furniture of a monastic church—tall stalls, altars, images of the great ones of heaven, wide eloquent spaces that gave room to the soul to breathe. . . . He had dreamed the other perhaps; he had read histories; he had seen pictures. . . .
The organ broke off in full blast; and under the high roofs came pealing the cry of a trumpet. He awoke with a start; the Cardinals were already on their feet at a gesture from a master of ceremonies. Then he stepped into his place and went down with them to the choir-gates to meet the King. . . .
(II)
It was in the Jerusalem chamber when the King was gone, a couple of hours later, that the new abbot of Westminster came up to him. He was a small, rosy man with very clear, beautiful eyes.
"Can you speak to me for five minutes, Monsignor?" he said.
The other glanced across at the Cardinals.
"Certainly, father abbot."
The two went out, down a little passage, and into a parlour. They sat down.
"It's about Dom Adrian," said the abbot abruptly.
Monsignor checked the sudden shock that ran through him. He knew he must show no emotion.
"It's terribly on my conscience," went on the other, with distress visibly growing as he spoke. "I feel I ought to have seen which way he was going. He was one of my novices, you know, before we were transferred. . . . He would have been here to-day if all had been well. He was to have been one of my monks. I suggested his name."
Monsignor Masterman began to deprecate the self-accusation of the other.
"Yes, yes," said the abbot sharply. "But the point is whether anything can be done. The trial begins on Monday, you see."
"Will he submit?"
The abbot shook his head.
"I don't think so. He's extraordinarily determined. But I wanted to know if you could give me any hope on the other side. Could you do anything for him with the Cardinal, or at Rome?"
"I . . . I will speak to the Cardinal, certainly, if you wish.
But——"
"Yes, I know. But you know a great deal depends on the temper of the court. Facts depend for their interpretation upon the point of view."
"But I understand that it's definite heresy—that he denies that there is any distinction between the miracles of the Church and——"
The abbot interrupted.
"Yes, yes, Monsignor. But for all that there's a great deal in the way these things are approached. You see there's so much neutral ground on which the Church has defined nothing."
"I am afraid, from what I've seen of the papers, that Dom Adrian will insist on a clear issue."
"I'm afraid so: I'm afraid so. We'll do our best here to persuade him to be reasonable. And I thought that if you would perhaps do your best on the other side—would tell the Cardinal, as from yourself, what you think of Dom Adrian."
Monsignor nodded.
"If we could but postpone the trial for a while," went on the abbot almost distractedly. "That poor boy! His face has been with me all to-day."
For an instant Monsignor almost gave way. He felt himself on the point of breaking out into a burst of protest against the whole affair—of denouncing the horror and loathing that during these last days had steadily grown within him—a horror that so far he had succeeded in keeping to himself. Then once more he crushed it down, and stood up for fear his resolution should give way.
"I will do what I can, my lord," he said coldly.
(III)
A great restlessness seized upon the man who had lost his memory that night.
He had thought after his return from abroad that things were well with him again—that he had learned the principles of this world that was so strange to him; and his busy days—all that had to be done and recovered, and his success in doing it—these things at once distracted and soothed him. And now once more he was back in his bewilderment.
One great principle it was which confused his whole outlook—the employment of force upon the side of Christianity. Here, on the large scale, was the forcible repression of the Socialists; on a small scale, the punishment of a heretic. What kind of religion was this that preached gentleness and practised violence? . . .
Between eleven and twelve o'clock he could bear it no longer. The house was quiet, and the lights for the most part gone out. He took his hat and thin cloak, throwing this round him so as to hide the purple at his throat, went softly down the corridors and stairs, and let himself out noiselessly into Ambrosden Avenue. He felt he must have air and space: he was beginning almost to hate this silent, well-ordered ecclesiastical house, where wheels ran so smoothly, so inexorably, and so effectively.
He came out presently into Victoria Street and turned westwards.
He did not notice much as he went. Only his most superficial faculties paid attention to the great quiet lighted thoroughfare, to the few figures that moved along, to the scattered sentinels of the City of Westminster police in their blue and silver, who here and there stood at the corners of the cross-streets, who saluted him as he went by; to the little lighted shrines that here and there hung at the angles. Certainly it was a Catholic city, he perceived in his bitterness, drilled and disciplined by its religion; there was no noise, no glare, no apparent evil. And the marvel was that the people seemed to love to have it so! He remembered questioning a friend or two soon after his return to England as to the revival of these Curfew laws, and the xtraordinary vigilance over morals; and the answer he had received to the effect that those things were taken now as a matter of course. One priest had told him that civilization in the modern sense would be inconceivable without them. How else could the few rule the many? . . .
He came down, across Parliament Square, to the river at last, walking swiftly and purposelessly. A high gateway, with a guard-room on either side, spanned the entrance to the wide bridge that sprang across to Southwark, and an officer stepped out as he approached, saluted, and waited.
He drove down his impatience with an effort, remembering the espionage (as he called it) practised after nightfall.
"I want to breathe and look at the river," he said sharply.
The officer paused an instant.
"Very good, father," he said.
Ah, this was better! . . . The bridge, empty from end to end, so far as he could see, ran straight over to the south side, where, once again, there rose up the guard-house. He turned sharply when he saw it, and leaned on the parapet looking eastwards.
The eternal river flowed beneath him, clean and steady and strong, between the high embankments. (He knew by now all about the lock-system that counteracted the ebb and flow of the tides.) Scarcely a hundred yards away curved out another bridge, and behind that another and another, down into the distance, all outlined in half-lights that shone like stars and flashed back like heaven itself from the smooth-running water beneath. An extraordinary silence lay over all—the silence of a sleeping city—though it was scarcely yet midnight, and though the city itself on either side of the river lay white and glowing in the lights that burned everywhere till dawn.
At first it quieted him—this vision of earthly peace, this perfection to which order and civilization had come; and then, as he regarded it, it enraged him. . . .
For was not this very vision an embodiment of the force that he hated? It was this very thing that oppressed and confined his spirit—this inexorable application of eternal principles to temporal affairs. Here was a city of living men, each an individual personality, of individual tastes, thoughts, and passions, each a world to himself and monarch of that world. Yet by some abominable trick, it seemed, these individuals were not merely in external matters forced to conform to the Society which they helped to compose, but interiorly too; they actually had been tyrannized over in their consciences and judgments, and loved their chains. If he had known that the fires of revolt lay there sleeping beneath this smooth exterior he would have hated it far less; but he had seen with his own eyes that it was not so. The crowds that had swarmed a while ago round the Cathedral, pouring in and filling it for the Te Deum of thanksgiving that one more country had been brought under the yoke; the sea of faces that had softly applauded and bowed beneath the blessing of those two Cardinals in scarlet; the enthusiasm, the more amazing in its silent orderliness, which had greeted the restoration of the old national Abbey to its Benedictine founders—even the very interviews he had had with quiet, deferential men, who, he understood, stood at the very head of the secular powers; the memory of the young King kissing the ring of the abbot at the steps into the choir—all these things proved plainly enough that by some supernatural alchemy the very minds of men had been transformed, that they were no longer free to rebel and resent and assert inalienable rights—in short, that a revolution had passed over the world such as history had never before known, that men no longer lived free and independent lives of their own, but had been persuaded to contribute all that made them men to the Society which they composed.
He perceived now clearly that it was this forced contribution that he hated—-this merging of the individual in the body, and the body one of principles that were at once precise and immutable. It was the extinction of Self.
Then, almost without perceiving the connection, he turned in his mind to Christianity as he conceived it to be—to his ideal figure of Christ; and in an instant he saw the contrast, and why it was that the moral instinct within him loathed and resented this modern Christian State.
For it was a gentle Figure that stood to him for Christ—God? yes, in some profound and mysterious way, but, for all earthly purposes of love and imitation, a meek and persuasive Man whose kingdom was not of this world, who repudiated violence and inculcated love; One who went through the world with simple tasks and soft words, who suffered without striking, who obeyed with no desire to rule.
And what had this tranquil, tolerant Figure in common with the strong discipline of this Church that bore His name—a Church that had waited so long, preaching His precepts, until she grew mighty and could afford to let them drop: this Church which, after centuries of blood and tears, at last had laid her hands upon the sceptre, and ruled the world with whom she had pleaded in vain so long; this Church who, after two thousand years of pain, had at last put her enemies under her feet—"repressed" the infidel and killed the heretic?
And so the interior conflict went on within this man, who found within him a Christianity with which the Christian world in which he lived had no share or part. He still stared out in the soft autumn night at the huge quiet city, his chin on his hands and his elbows on the parapet, half perceiving the parable at which he looked. Once it was this river beneath him that had made the city; now the city set the river within bars and ordered its goings. Once it was Christianity—the meek and gentle spirit of Christ—that had made civilization; now civilization had fettered Christianity in unbreakable chains. . . . Yet even as he resented and rebelled, he felt he dared not speak. There were great forces about him, forces he had experienced for himself—Science tamed at last, self-control, organization, and a Peace which he could not understand. Every man with whom he had to do seemed kind and tender; there was the patient old priest who taught him and bore with him as with a child, the fatherly cardinal, the quiet, serene ecclesiastics of the house in which he lived, the controlled crowds, the deferential great men with whom he talked. But it was their very strength, he saw, that made them tender; the appalling power of the machine, which even now he felt that he but half understood, was the very thing that made it run so smoothly. It had the horror of a perfectly controlled steel piston that moves as delicately as a feather fan.
For he saw how inexorable was that strength which controlled the world; how ruthless, in spite of smooth and compassionate words, towards those who resisted it. The Socialists were to be "repressed"; the heretic was to be tried for his life; and in all that wide world in which he lived it seemed that there was not one Christian who recoiled, not one breath of public opinion that could express itself.
And he—he who hated it—must take his part. A Fate utterly beyond his understanding had set him there as a wheel in that mighty machine; and he must revolve in his place motionlessly and unresistingly in whatever task was set before him. . . .
Once only, as he stared out at the great prosperous view, did his heart sicken and fail him. He dropped his face upon his hands, and cried to the only Christ whom he knew in silence. . . .
CHAPTER III
(I)
It was not until the afternoon of the third day, as the trial of Dom Adrian Bennett drew to its close, that the man who had lost his memory could no longer resist the horrible fascination of the affair, and presented himself at the door of the court-room. He had learned that morning that the end of the trial was in sight.
It was outside a block of buildings somewhere to the north of St. Paul's Cathedral that the car set him down. He learned at the porter's lodge the number of the court, and then passed in, following his directions, through a quadrangle that was all alight with scarlet creepers, where three or four ecclesiastics saluted him, up a staircase or two, and found himself at last at a tall door bearing the number he wanted. As he hesitated to knock, the door opened, and a janitor came out.
"Can I go in?" asked the priest. "I am from Archbishop's House."
"I can take you into the gallery at the back, Monsignor," said the man. "The body of the court is full."
"That will do."
They went round a corner together and came to a door up three or four stairs. The janitor unlocked this and threw it back. Farther steps rose within the doorway, and Monsignor as he set foot on the first had a vivid impression that the court he was approaching was crowded with people. There was no sound at first, but an atmosphere of intense and expectant force.
It was a little curtained gallery in which the priest found himself, not unlike a box at a theatre, looking out upon the court from the corner immediately adjacent to the wall against which the raised seats of the judges were placed. He looked round the court, himself sitting a little back in a kind of shame, first identifying the actors in this dreadful drama. He was glad that the gallery had no other occupant than himself.
First there were the judges—three men sitting beneath a canopied roof, beneath which, over their heads, hung a large black and white crucifix. He knew them, all three. There was the Dominican in the centre—one of that Order which has had charge of heresy-courts since the beginning—a large-faced, kindly featured, rosy man, with a crown of white hair, leaning back now with closed eyes, listening, and obviously alert; on his right, farther from the spectator, sat the Canon-Theologian of Westminster, a small, brown-faced man with black eyes, looking considerably younger than his years; and on this side the third judge, pale and bald and colourless—a priest who held the degree of Doctor in Physical Science as well as in Theology—he at this instant was drumming gently with a large white hand on the edge of his desk.
Beneath the judges' dais was the well of the court, very much, somehow, as Monsignor had expected (for this was his first experience in a Church court), with the clerks' table immediately beneath the desks, and half a dozen ecclesiastics ranged at it. Some strange-looking instruments stood within reach of the presiding clerk, but he recognized these as the mechanical recorders, of which he had had some experience himself. They were of the nature of phonographs, and by an exceedingly ingenious and yet very simple system could be made to repeat aloud any part of the speeches or answers that had been uttered in the course of the trial. At either end of the clerks' table rose up a structure like a witness-box, slightly below the level of the judges' desks. Opposite the desks was the lightly railed dock for the prisoner. The rest of the court was seated for the public, and as the spectator saw, was completely filled, chiefly with ecclesiastics. Even the gangways were thronged with standing figures. And over all hung that air of intense expectancy and attention.
He glanced once more round the court, once more at the judges. Then he allowed himself to look full at the prisoner, whom he had not seen since his departure from Lourdes.
Dom Adrian was just as he remembered him, perhaps a shade paler from the fierce attention of the last three days, but he had the same serene, confident air; his eyes were bright and luminous, and his voice (for he was speaking at this moment) perfectly natural and controlled.
It was hard at first to pick up the thread of what he was saying. He had a sheet or two of paper before him, to which he referred as he spoke, and he seemed to be summing up, in a very allusive manner, some earlier speeches of his. Technical terms made their appearance from time to time, and decrees were quoted by their initial Latin words—decrees which conveyed nothing to the listener in the gallery. It was difficult too, at this distance, to understand the very swift Latin which he spoke in a conversational voice that was almost casual. His whole air was of one who is interested, but not overwhelmingly concerned, in the subject under debate.
He ended at last, and bowed.
Obviously they were not at a very critical part of the trial, thought Monsignor. He felt extraordinarily reassured. He had expected more of a scene.
The Dominican opened his eyes and took up a pen. He glanced at his companions, but they made no sign or movement.
"You have made it perfectly clear," he said. "Nothing could be clearer. I see" (he turned slightly to right and left, and his fellow-judges nodded gently in acquiescence)—"I see no reason to modify what I said just now, and the judgment of the court must stand. Nothing can be clearer to my mind—and I must say that my assessors wholly concur, as you heard just now—nothing can be clearer than that you have contradicted in the most express terms the decrees in question, and that you have refused to modify or to withdraw any of the theses under dispute. Further, you have refused to avail yourself of any of the releases which are perfectly open to you by law. You declined all those openings which I indicated to you, and you appear determined to push the matter to extremes. I must tell you then plainly that I see nothing for it but the forwarding of our opinions to Rome, and I cannot hold out to you the smallest prospect that you will meet with a different judgment from the highest court."
He paused a moment.
There was a profound silence in the court. As Monsignor Masterman glanced round, unable to understand what it was that caused this sense of tremendous tension, he noticed a head or two in that array of faces drop suddenly as if in overwhelming emotion. He looked at the prisoner; but there was no movement there. The young monk had put his papers neatly together, and was standing, upright and motionless, with his hands clasped upon them. The Dominican's voice went on abruptly:
"Have you anything further to say before the court dissolves?"
"I should like to express my sense of the extreme fairness and considerateness of my judges," said the monk, "and to say again, as at the beginning, that I commit my cause unreservedly into the hands of God."
The three judges rose together; a door opened behind and they disappeared. Instantly a buzz of tongues began and the sound of shifting feet. As Monsignor glanced back again at the dock, amazed at the sudden change of scene, he saw the monk's head disappearing down the staircase that led below from the dock. He still did not understand what had happened. He still thought that it was some minor stage of the process that was finished, probably on some technical point.
(II)
He still sat there wondering, thinking that he would let the corridors clear a little before he went out again, and asking himself what it was that had caused that obvious sensation during the judge's last words. To all outward appearance, nothing could be less critical than what he had seen and heard. Plainly the trial was going against the prisoner, but there had been no decision, no sentence. The inquisitors and the prisoner had talked together almost like friends discussing a not very vital matter. And yet the sensation had been overwhelming. . . .
As he rose at last, still watching the emptying court, he heard a tap on the door, and before he could speak, the Abbot of Westminster rustled up the steps, in his habit and cross and gold chain. His face looked ominously strained and pale.
"I . . . I saw you from the court, Monsignor. For God's sake . . . sit down again an instant. Let me speak with you."
Monsignor said nothing. He could not even now understand.
"I must thank you for your kind offices, Monsignor. I know you did what you could. His Eminence sent for me after he had seen you. And . . . and I must ask you to help us again . . . at Rome."
"Certainly—anything . . . . But——"
"I fear it's hopeless," went on the abbot, staring out into the empty court, where an usher was moving quickly about from table to table setting papers straight. "But any chance that there is must be taken. . . . Will you write for us, Monsignor? or better still, urge the Cardinal? There is no time to lose."
"I don't understand, my lord," said the prelate abruptly, suddenly convinced that more had happened than he knew. "I was only here just at the end, and . . . . what is it I can do?"
The abbot looked at him.
"That was the end," he said quietly. "Did you not hear the sentence?"
Monsignor shook his head. A kind of sickness seemed to rise from his heart and envelop him.
"I heard nothing," he said. "I came in during Dom Adrian's last speech."
The abbot licked his dry lips; there was a wondering sort of apprehensiveness in his eyes.
"That was the last formality," he said. "Sentence was given twenty minutes ago."
"And——"
The abbot bowed his head, plucking nervously at his cross.
"It has to go to Rome to be ratified," he said hurriedly. "There will be a week or two of delay. Dom Adrian refused any release. But . . . but he knows there is no hope."
Monsignor Masterman leaned back and drew a long breath. He understood now. But he perceived he must give no sign. The abbot talked on rapidly; the other caught sentences and names here and there: he grasped that there was no real possibility of a reversal of the judgment, but that yet every effort must be made. But it was only with one part of his mind, and that the most superficial, that he attended to all this. Interiorly he was occupied wholly with facing the appalling horror that, with the last veil dropped at last, now looked him in the eyes.
He stood up at last, promising he would see the Cardinal that night; and then his resolve leapt to the birth.
"I should like to see Dom Adrian alone," he said quietly; "and I had better see him at once. Can you arrange that?" The abbot stopped at the door of the gallery.
"Yes," he said, "I think so. Will you wait here, Monsignor?"
(III)
Monsignor Masterman lifted his eyes as the door closed, and saw the young monk standing before him, beside the little table.
He had sat down again in the gallery while the abbot was gone, watching mechanically the ushers come into the court and remove the recording-boxes one by one; and meantime in his soul he watched also, rather than tried to arrange, the thoughts that fled past in ceaseless repetition. He could plan nothing, formulate nothing. He just perceived, as a man himself sentenced to death might perceive, that the Supreme Horror was a reality at last. The very ordinariness of the scene he had witnessed, the familiarity of some of the faces (he had sat next at dinner, not a week ago, the brown-faced Canon-Theologian), the conversational manner of the speakers, the complete absence of any dramatic solemnity—these things increased the terror and repugnance he felt. Were the preliminaries of Death for Heresy so simple as all that? Was the point of view that made it possible so utterly accepted by everyone as to allow the actual consummation to come about so quietly? . . .
The thing seemed impossible and dreamlike. He strove to hold himself quiet till he could understand. . . . But at the sight of the young monk, paled and tired-looking, yet perfectly serene, his self-control broke down. A spasm shook his face; he stretched out his hands blindly and helplessly, and some sound broke from his mouth.
He felt himself taken by the arm and led forward. Then he slipped into a chair, and dropped his face in his hands upon the table.
It was a few moments before he recovered and looked up.
"There, there, Monsignor," said the monk. ". . . I didn't expect this. There's nothing to——"
"But . . . but——"
"It's a shock to you, I see. . . . It's very kind. . . . But I knew it all along. Surely you must have known——"
"I never dreamt of it. I never thought it conceivable. It's abominable; it's——"
"Monsignor, this isn't kind to me," rang out the young voice sternly; and the elder man recovered himself sharply. "Please talk to me quietly. Father Abbot tells me you will see the Cardinal."
"I'll do anything—anything in my power. Tell me what I can do."
He had recovered himself, as under a douche of water, at the sharpness of the monk's tone just now. He felt but one thing at this instant, that he would strain every force he had to hinder this crime. He remained motionless, conscious of that sensation of intense tightness of nerve and sinew in which an overpressed mind expresses itself.
The monk sat down, on the farther side of the table.
"That's better, Monsignor," he said, smiling. . . . "Well, there's really not much to do. Insanity seems the only possible plea."
He smiled again, brilliantly.
"Tell me the whole thing," said the prelate suddenly and hoarsely. "Just the outline. I don't understand; and I can do nothing unless I do."
"You haven't followed the case?"
Monsignor shook his head. The monk considered again.
"Well," he said. "This is the outline; I'll leave out technical details. I have written a book (which will never see the light now) and I sent an abstract of it to Rome, giving my main thesis. It's on the miraculous element in Religion. I'm a Doctor in Physical Science, you know, as well as in Theology. Now there's a certain class of cure (I won't bother you with details, but a certain class of cure) that has always been claimed by theologians as evidently supernatural. And I'll acknowledge at once that one or two of the decrees of the Council of 1960 certainly seem to support them. But my thesis is, first, that these cures are perfectly explicable by natural means, and secondly, that therefore these decrees must be interpreted in a sense not usually received by theologians, and that they do not cover the cases in dispute. I'm not a wilful heretic, and I accept absolutely therefore that these decrees, as emanating from an ecumenical council, are infallibly true. But I repudiate entirely—since I am forced to do so by scientific fact (or, we will say, by what I am persuaded is scientific fact)—the usual theological interpretation of the wording of the decrees. Well, my judges take the other view. They tell me that I am wrong in my second point, and therefore wrong also in my first. They tell me that the decrees do categorically cover the class of cure I have dealt with; that such cures have been pronounced by the Church therefore to be evidently supernatural; and that therefore I am heretical in both my points. On my side, I refuse to submit, maintaining that I am differing, not from the Catholic Church as she really is, (which would be heretical), but from the Catholic Church as interpreted by these theologians. I know it's rash of me to set myself against a practically universal and received interpretation; but I feel myself bound in conscience to do so. Very well; that is the point we have now reached. I could not dream of separating myself from Catholic Unity, and therefore that way of escape is barred. There was nothing for it, then, but for my judges to pronounce sentence; and that they did, ten minutes before you came in. (I saw you come in, Monsignor.) I am sentenced, that is to say, as an obstinate heretic—as refusing to submit to the plain meaning of an ecumenical decree. There remains Rome. The whole trial must go there verbatim. Three things may happen. Either I am summoned to explain any statements that may seem obscure. (That certainly will not happen. I have been absolutely open and clear.) Or the sentence may be quashed or modified. And that I do not think will happen, since I have, as I know, all the theologians against me."
There was a pause.
The prelate heard the words, and indeed followed their sense with his intellect; but it appeared to him as if this concise analysis had no more vital connection with the real facts than a doctor's diagnosis with the misery of a mourner. He did not want analysis; he wanted reassurance. Then he braced himself up to meet the unfinished sentence. "Or——" he murmured.
"Or the sentence will be ratified," said the monk quietly. And again there was silence. It was the monk again who broke it. "Where Father Abbot seems to think you can help me perhaps, Monsignor, is in persuading the Cardinal to write to Rome. I do not quite know what he can do for me; but I suppose the idea is that he may succeed in urging that the point is a disputed one, and that the case had better wait for further scientific as well as theological investigation."
Monsignor flung out his hands suddenly. The strain had reached breaking-point.
"What's the good!" he cried. "It's the system—the whole system that's so hateful . . . hateful and impossible."
"What?"
"It's the system," he cried again. "From beginning to end it's the system that's wrong. I hate it more every day. It's brutal, utterly brutal and unchristian." He stared miserably at the young monk, astonished at the cold look in his eyes.
The monk looked at him questioningly—without a touch of answering sympathy, it seemed—merely with an academic interest.
"I don't understand, Monsignor. What is it that you——"
"You don't understand! You tell me you don't understand! You who are suffering under it! Why——"
"You think I'm being unjustly treated? Is that it? Of course I too don't think that——"
"No, no, no," cried the elder man. "It's not you in particular. I don't know about that—I don't understand. But it's that any living being can live under such tyranny—such oppression of free thought and judgment! What becomes of science and discovery under a system like this? What becomes of freedom—of the right to think for oneself? Why——"
The young monk leaned a little over the table.
"Monsignor, you don't know what you are saying. Tell me quietly what it is that's troubling you. Quietly, if you please. I can't bear much more strain."
The man who had lost his memory mastered himself with an effort. His horror had surged up just now and overwhelmed him altogether, but the extraordinary quiet of the other man and his apparently frank inability to understand what was the matter brought him down again to reality. Subconsciously, too, he perceived that it would be a relief to himself to put his developing feeling into words to another.
"You wish me to say? Very well—-"
He hesitated again for words.
"You are sure you'd better? I know you've been ill. I don't want to—-"
Monsignor waved it away with a little gesture.
"That's all right," he said. "I'm not ill now. I wish to God I were!"
"Quietly, please," said the young man.
He swallowed in his throat and rearranged himself in his chair. He felt himself alone and abandoned, even where he had been certain of an emotional sympathy.
"I know I'm clean against public opinion in what I think. I've learnt that at last. I thought at first that it was the other way, as . . . as I think it must have been a hundred years ago. But I see now that all the world is against me—all except perhaps the people who are called infidels."
"You mean the Socialists?"
"Yes, I suppose so. Well, it seems to me that the Church is . . ." (he hesitated, to pick his words) "is assuming an impossible attitude. Take your own case; though that's only one: it's the same everywhere. There are the sumptuary and domestic laws; there's the 'repression,' as they call it, of the Socialists. But take your own case. You are perfectly satisfied that your conclusions are scientific, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"You're a Christian and a Catholic. And yet, because these conclusions of yours are condemned—not answered, mind you, or refuted by other scientists—but just condemned—condemned by ecclesiastics as contrary to what they assume to be true—you . . . you care——"
He broke off, struggling again with fierce emotion. He felt a hand on his arm.
"Monsignor, you're too excited. May I ask you some questions instead?"
Monsignor nodded.
"Well, don't take my case only. Take the system, as you said just now. I really want to know…. You think that the Socialists ought not to be repressed—that every man ought to be free to utter his opinions, whatever they may be. Is that it?"
"Yes."
"However revolutionary they may be?"
Monsignor hesitated. He had considered this point before. He felt his answer was not wholly satisfactory. But the monk went on.
"Suppose these opinions were subversive of all law and order. Suppose there were men who preached murder and adultery—doctrines that meant the destruction of society. Would you allow these, too, to publish their opinions broadcast?"
"Of course, you must draw the line somewhere," began
Monsignor. "Of course——"
"Where?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You said that we must draw the line somewhere. I ask you where?"
"Well, that, of course, must be a matter of degree."
"Surely it must be one of principle. . . . Can't you give me any principle you would allow?"
The passion of just now seemed wholly gone. Monsignor had an uncomfortable sense that he had behaved like a child and that this young monk was on firmer ground than himself. But again he hesitated.
"Well, would you accept this principle?" asked Dom Adrian. "Would you say that every society has a right to suppress opinions which are directly subversive of the actual foundations on which itself stands? Let me give an instance. Suppose you had a country that was a republic, but that allowed that other forms of government might be equally good. (Suppose, for instance, that while all acquiesced more or less in the republic, yet that many of the citizens personally preferred a monarchy.) Well, I suppose you would say it was tyranny for the republic to punish the monarchists with death?"
"Certainly."
"So should I. But if a few of the citizens repudiated all forms of government and preached Anarchy, well, I suppose you would allow that the government would have a perfect right to silence them?"
"I suppose so."
"Of course," said Dom Adrian quietly. "It was what you allowed just now. Society may, and must, protect itself."
"What's that got to do with it? These Socialists are not Anarchists. You're not an atheist. And even if you were, what right would the Church have to put you to death?"
"Oh! that's what you're thinking, is it, Monsignor? But really, you know, Society must protect itself. The Church can't interfere there. For it isn't for a moment the Church that punishes with death. On the contrary, the Catholic authorities are practically unanimous against it."
Monsignor made an impatient movement.
"I don't understand in the least," he said. "It seems to me——"
"Well, shall I give you my answer?"
Monsignor nodded.
The monk drew a breath and leaned back once more.
To the elder man the situation seemed even more unreal and impossible than at the beginning. He had come, full of fierce and emotional sympathy, to tell a condemned man how wholly his heart was on his side, to repudiate with all his power the abominable system that had made such things possible. And now, in five minutes, the scene had become one of almost scholastic disputation; and the heretic, it seemed—the condemned heretic—was defending the system that condemned him to a man who represented it as an official! He waited, almost resentfully.
"Monsignor," said the young man, "forgive me for saying so; but it seems to me you haven't thought this thing out—that you're simply carried away by feeling. No doubt it's your illness. . . . Well, let me put it as well as I can. . . ."
He paused again, compressing his lips. He was pale, and evidently holding himself hard in hand; but his eyes were bright and intelligent. Then he abruptly began again.
"What's wrong with you, Monsignor," he said, "is that you don't realize—again, no doubt, owing to your loss of memory—that you don't realize that the only foundation of society at the present day is Catholicism. You see we know now that Catholicism is true. It has reasserted itself finally. Every other scheme has been tried and has failed; and Catholicism, though it has never died, has once more been universally accepted. Even heathen countries accept it de facto as the scheme on which the life of the human race is built. Very well, then, the man who strikes at Catholicism strikes at society. If he had his way society would crumble down again. Then what can Catholic society do except defend itself, even by the death penalty? Remember, the Church does not kill. It never has; it never will. It is society that puts to death. And it is certainly true to say that theologians, as a whole, would undoubtedly abolish the death penalty to-morrow if they could. It's an open secret that the Holy Father would do away with it to-morrow if he could."
"Then why doesn't he? Isn't he supreme?" snapped the other bitterly.
"Indeed not. Countries rule themselves. He only has a veto if an actually unchristian law is passed. And this is not actually unchristian. It's based on universal principles."
"But——"
"Wait an instant. . . . Yes, the Church sanctions it in one sense. So did the Church approve of the death penalty in the case of murder—another sin against society. Well, Christian society a hundred years ago inflicted death for the murder of the body; Christian society to-day inflicts death for a far greater crime against herself—that is, murderous attacks against her own life-principle."
"Then the old Protestants were right after all," burst in Monsignor indignantly; "they said that Rome would persecute again if she could."
"If she could?" said the monk questioningly.
"If she was strong enough."
"No, no, no!" cried the other, beating his hand on the table in gentle impatience; "it would be hopelessly immoral for the Church to persecute simply because she was strong enough—simply because she had a majority. She never persecutes for mere opinions. She has never claimed her right to use force. But, as soon as a country is convincedly Catholic—as soon, that is to say, as her civilization rests upon Catholicism and nothing else, that country has a perfect right to protect herself by the death penalty against those who menace her very existence as a civilized community. And that is what heretics do; and that is what Socialists do. Whether the authorities are right or wrong in any given instance is quite another question. Innocent men have been hanged. Orthodox Catholics have suffered unjustly. Personally I believe that I myself am innocent; but I am quite clear that if I am a heretic" (he leaned forward again and spoke slowly), "if I am a heretic, I must be put to death by society."
Monsignor was dumb with sheer amazement, and a consciousness that he had been baffled. He felt he had been intellectually tricked; and he felt it an additional outrage that he had been tricked by this young monk with whom he had come to sympathize.
"But the death penalty!" he cried. "Death! that is the horror. I understand a spiritual penalty for a spiritual crime—but a physical one. . . ."
Dom Adrian smiled a little wearily.
"My dear Monsignor," he said, "I thought I had explained that it was for a crime against society. I am not put to death for my opinions; but because, holding those opinions, which are declared heretical, and refusing to submit to an authoritative decision, I am an enemy of the civil state which is upheld solely by the sanctions of Catholicism. Remember it is not the Church that puts me to death. That is not her affair. She is a spiritual society."
"But death! death, anyhow!"
The man's face grew grave and tender.
"Is that so dreadful," he said, "to a convinced Catholic?"
Monsignor rose to his feet. It seemed to him that his whole moral sense was in danger. He made his last appeal.
"But Christ!" he cried; "Jesus Christ! Can you conceive that gentle Lord of ours tolerating all this for one instant! I cannot answer you now; though I am convinced there is an answer. But is it conceivable that He who said, 'Resist not evil,' that He who Himself was dumb before his murderers——"
Dom Adrian rose too. An extraordinary intensity came into his eyes, and his face grew paler still. He began in a low voice, but as he ended his voice rang aloud in the little room.
"It is you who are dishonouring our Lord," he said. "Certainly He suffered, as we Catholics too can suffer, as you shall see one day—as you have seen a thousand times already, if you know anything of the past. But is that all that He is? . . . Is He just the Prince of Martyrs, the supreme Pain-bearer, the silent Lamb of God? Have you never heard of the wrath of the Lamb? of the eyes that are as a flame of fire? of the rod of iron with which He breaks in pieces the kings of the earth? . . . The Christ you appeal to is nothing. It is but the failure of a Man with the Divinity left out . . . the Prince of sentimentalists, and of that evil old religion that once dared to call itself Christianity. But the Christ we worship is more than that—the Eternal Word of God, the Rider on the White Horse, conquering and to conquer…. Monsignor, you forget of what Church you are a priest! It is the Church of Him who refused the kingdoms of this world from Satan, that He might win them for Him self. He has done so! Christ reigns! . . . Monsignor, that is what you have forgotten! Christ is no longer an opinion or a theory. He is a Fact. Christ reigns! He actually rules this world. And the world knows it."
He paused for one second, shaking with his own passion. Then he flung out his hands.
"Wake up, Monsignor! Wake up! You are dreaming. Christ is the King of men again, now—not of just religiously minded devots. He rules, because He has a right to rule. . . . And the civil power stands for Him in secular matters, and the Church in spiritual. I am to be put to death! Well, I protest that I am innocent, but not that the crime charged against me does not deserve death. I protest, but I do not resent it. Do you think I fear death? . . Is that not in His hands too? . . . Christ reigns, and we all know it. And you must know it too!"
All sensation seemed to have ebbed from the man who listened. . . . He was conscious of a white ecstatic face with burning eyes looking at him. He could no longer actively resist or rebel. It was only by the utmost effort that he could still keep from yielding altogether. Some great pressure seemed to enfold and encircle him, threatening his very existence as an individual. So tremendous was the force with which the words were spoken, that for an instant it seemed as if he saw in mental vision that which they described—a Supreme Dominant Figure, wounded indeed, yet overmastering and compelling in His strength—no longer the Christ of gentleness and meekness, but a Christ who had taken His power at last and reigned, a Lamb that was a Lion, a Servant that was Lord of all; One that pleaded no longer, but commanded. . . .
And yet he clung still desperately and blindly to his old ideal. He pushed off from him this dominating Presence; his whole self and individuality would not yield to Him who demanded the sacrifice of both. He saw this Christ at last, and by a flash of intuition perceived that this was the key to this changed world he found so incomprehensible; and yet he would not have it—he would not have this Man to rule over him. . . .
He made one last effort; the vision passed and he stood up, feeling once more sensation come back, understanding that he had saved himself from an extinction more utter than that of death.
"Well," he said quietly—so quietly that he almost deceived himself too,—"well, I will remember what you say, Dom Adrian, and I will do what I can with the Cardinal."
CHAPTER IV
(I)
"I'm afraid it's been a great shock," said Father Jervis soothingly. "And I'm not surprised, after your illness. . . . Yes I quite see your point. Of course it must seem very strange. . . . Now what about coming over to Ireland for a week? The Cardinal will be delighted, I'm sure."
The blow had fallen this morning—a fortnight after the trial had ended.
First, the answer had come back from Rome that the sentence was ratified—a sentence simply to the effect that the Church could no longer protect this tonsured and consecrated son of hers from the secular laws. But, as Monsignor knew privately, an urgent appeal had been made by Rome to remit the penalty in this instance, as in others. Then the formalities of handing over the monk to the secular authorities had taken place, in accordance with the Clergy Discipline Amendment Act of 1964—an Act by which the secular houses of Representatives had passed a code of penalties for clerks condemned by the ecclesiastical courts—clerks, that is to say, who had availed themselves of Benefit of Clergy and had submitted themselves to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Under that Act Dom Adrian had been removed to a secular prison, his case had been re-examined and, in spite of the Pope's appeal, the secular sentence passed. And this morning Monsignor had read that the sentence had been carried out. . . . He neither knew nor dared to ask in what form. It was enough that it was death.
There had been a scene with the startled secretaries. Fortunately Monsignor had been incoherent. One of them had remained with him while the other ran for Father Jervis. Then the two laymen had left the room, and the priests alone together.
Things were quieter now. Monsignor had recovered himself, and was sitting white and breathless with his friend beside him.
"Come to Ireland for a week," said the old man again, watching him with those large, steady, bright eyes of his. "It is perfectly natural, under the circumstances, that the thing should be a shock. To us, of course——"
He broke off as Monsignor looked up with a strange white glare in his eyes.
"Well, well," said the old man. "You must give yourself a chance. You've been working magnificently; I think perhaps a little too hard. And we don't want another breakdown. . . . Then I take you'll come to Ireland? We'll spend a perfectly quiet week, and be back in time for the meeting of Parliament."
Monsignor made a small movement of assent with his head. (He had had Ireland explained to him before.)
"Then I'll leave you quietly here for a little. Call me up if you want me. I'll tell the secretaries to work in the next room. I'll see the Cardinal at once, and we'll go by the five o'clock boat. I'll arrange everything. You needn't give it a thought."
A curious process seemed to have been at work upon the mind of the man who had lost his memory, since his interview with the monk immediately after the trial. At first a kind of numbness had descended upon him. He had gone back to his business, his correspondence, his interviews, his daily consultation with the Cardinal, and had conducted all these things efficiently enough. Yet, underneath, the situation arranged itself steadily and irresistibly. It had become impressed upon him that, whether for good or evil, the world was as it was; that Christian civilization had taken the form which he perceived round him, and that to struggle against it was as futile, from a mental point of view, as to resent the physical laws of the universe. Nothing followed upon such resistance except intense discomfort to oneself. It might be insupportably unjust that one could not fly without wings, yet the fact remained. It might be intolerably unchristian that a tonsured clerk should be put to death for heresy, yet he was put to death, and not a soul, it seemed (not even the victim himself) resented it. Dom Adrian's protest had been not against the execution of heretics, but against the statement that he was a heretic. But he had refused to submit to a decision which he acknowledged as authoritative, and found no fault therefore with the consequence of such refusal. The condemnation, he granted, was perfectly legal and therefore extrinsically lust; and it was the penalty he had to pay for an individualism which the responsible authorities of the State regarded as dangerous to the conditions on which society rested. And the rest was the business of the State, not of the Church.
The scheme then was beginning to grow clear to this man's indignant eyes. Even the "repression" of the Socialists fitted in, logically and inexorably. And he began to understand a little more what Dom Adrian had meant. There stood indeed, imminent over the world (whether ideally or actually was another question) a tremendous Figure that was already even more Judge than Saviour—a Personality that already had the Power and reigned; one to whose feet all the world crept in silence, who spoke ordinarily and normally through His Vicar on earth, who was represented on this or that plane by that court or the other; one who was literally a King of kings; to whose model all must be conformed; to whose final judgment every creature might appeal if he would but face that death through which alone that appeal might be conveyed. Such was the scheme which this priest began to discern; and he saw how the explanation of all that bewildered him lay within it. Yet none the less he resented it; none the less he failed to recognize in it that Christianity he seemed once to have known, long ago. Outwardly he conformed and submitted. Inwardly he was a rebel.
He sat on silent for a few minutes when his friend had left him, gradually recovering balance. He knew his own peril well enough, but he was not yet certain enough of his own standpoint—and perhaps not courageous enough—to risk all by declaring it. He felt helpless and powerless—like a child in a new school—before the tremendous forces in whose presence he found himself. For the present, at least, he knew that he must obey. . . .
(II)
"You will be astonished at Ireland," said Father Jervis a few hours later, as they sat together in the little lighted cabin on their way across England. "You know, of course, the general outlines?"
Monsignor roused himself.
"I know it's the Contemplative Monastery of Europe," he said.
"Just so. It's also the mental hospital of Europe. You see it's very favourably placed. None of the great lines of volors pass over it now. It's entirely secluded from the world. Of course there are the secular business centres of the country, as they always were, in north and south—Dublin and Belfast; they're like any other town, only rather quieter. But outside these you might say that the whole island is one monastic enclosure. I've brought a little book on it I thought you might like to look at."
He handed a little volume out of his bag. (It was printed on the usual nickel-sheets, invented by Edison fifty years before.)
"And to-night?" asked Monsignor heavily.
"To-night we're staying at Thurles. I made all arrangements this afternoon."
"And our programme?"
Father Jervis smiled.
"That'll depend on the guest-master," he said, "We put ourselves entirely under his orders, as I told you. He'll see us to-night or to-morrow morning; and the rest is in his hands."
"What's the system?" asked Monsignor suddenly and abruptly looking at him.
"The system?"
"Yes."
Father Jervis considered.
"It's hard to put it into words," he said. "I suppose you might say that they used atmosphere and personality. They're the strongest forces we know of—far stronger, of course, than argument. It's very odd how they used to be neglected—-"
"Eh?"
"Yes; until quite recently there was hardly any deliberate use of them at all. Well, now we know that they effect more than any persuasion . . . or . . . or . . . diet. And of course enclosed Religious naturally become experts in interior self-command, and therefore can apply these things better than anyone else."
He waved his hands vaguely and explanatorily.
"It's impossible to put it into words," he said. "The very essence of it is that it can't be."
Monsignor sighed and looked drearily out of the window.
* * * * *
As the hours of the day had gone by it had been this dreariness that had deepened on him, after the violent emotions of the morning. It was as if he already saw himself beaten down and crushed by those forces he had begun to recognize. And even this reminder that he was passing for a few days under a tyranny that was yet more severe failed to requicken any resentment. Inwardly the fire smouldered still red and angry; outwardly he was passive and obedient, and scarcely wished to be otherwise.
There was nothing of interest to be seen out of the window. The autumn evening was drawing in, and the far-off horizon of hills, with the rim of the sea already visible beyond it, was dark and lead-coloured under the darkening sky. He thought vaguely of Dom Adrian, in that melancholy and ineffective mood which evening suggests . . . he had been alive at this hour last night and now . . . Well, he had passed to the Secret which this world interpreted now so confidently. . . .
They halted above Dublin, and he watched, as weeks ago at Brighton, the lighted stage swing outside the windows. He noted a couple of white-frocked monks or friars, hooded in black, standing among the rest. Then he watched the stage drop out of sight, and the lights of Dublin spin eastwards and vanish. Then he turned listlessly to the book his friend had given him, and began to read.
As he stood himself on the platform at Thurles, bag in hand (they brought no servants to Ireland), it seemed to him that already there was a certain sense of quietness about him. He told himself it was probably the result of self-suggestion. But, for all that, it seemed curiously still. Beneath he saw great buildings, flattened under the height at which he stood—court after court, it appeared, each lighted invisibly and as clear as day. Yet no figures moved across them; and in the roadways that ran here and there was no crawling stream of ant-like beings such as he had seen elsewhere. Even the officials seemed to speak in undertones; and Father Jervis said no word at all. Then, as he felt the swift dropping movement beneath his feet, he saw the great lighted ship he had just left whirl off westwards, resembling a gigantic luminous moth, yet without bell or horn to announce its journey.
He followed his friend out through the doorway of the ground-platform to which the stage descended, and into the interior of a great white car that waited—still with a strange sense of irresponsibility and heaviness. He supposed that all was well—as well as could be in a world such as this. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes. There were three or four others in the great car, he noticed; but all were silent.
He opened them again as the car stopped. But the priest beside him made no movement. He looked out and saw that the car was halted between two high walls and in front of a great arched gateway. Even as he looked the gates rolled back noiselessly and the car moved through. (The others had got out, he noticed.)
It seemed, as they sped on, as if they were going through the streets of some strange dead city. All through which they passed was perfectly visible in the white artificial light. Now they ran between high walls; now along the side of a vast courtyard; now a structure resembling the side of a cloister slid by them swiftly and steadily—gone again in an instant. It was not until afterwards that he realized that there had hardly been one window to be seen; and not one living being.
And then at last the car stopped, and a monk in brown opened the door of the car.