Dawn of All, Robert Hugh Benson [ebook reader with highlighter txt] 📗

regarded himself, who could not yet so accept it, as a spiritual, if not an actual mental invalid. . . . He had been brought here to be treated. . . . Well, he would hold his own.

And then another mood came on him--a temptation, as it seemed to him then, to fling personal responsibility overboard; to accept this tremendous claim of authority to control even the thoughts of the heart. Surely peace lay this way. To submit to this crowned and sceptred Christ; to reject for ever the other--this meant relief and sanity. . . .

He walked more and more quickly and abruptly up and down the little tiled space. He was conscious of a conflict all confused with dust and smoke. He began to hesitate as to which was the higher, even which was the tolerable course--to sink his individuality, to throw up his hands and drown, or to assert that individuality openly and defiantly, and to take the consequences.


(V)

He awoke the next morning after a troubled night, conscious instantly of a sense of crisis. In one way or another, it seemed, he would have to come to a decision. The monk would be with him in less than an hour.

He dressed as before and breakfasted. Then, as the monk did not come, he went out to the tribune to pray and to prepare himself.

Ten minutes later the door opened quietly, and the lay-brother who had attended on him bowed to him as he turned, in sign that he was to come.

The monk was standing by the fireplace as he came in; he bowed very slightly. Then the two sat down.

* * * * *


"Tell me why you have come here, Monsignor."

The prelate moistened his lips. He was aware again of an emotion that was partly terror and partly confidence. And there was mixed with it, too, an extraordinary sense of simplicity. Conventionalities were useless here, he saw; he was expected to say what was in his heart, but at first he dared not.

"I . . . I was recommended to come," he said. "My friends thought I needed a little rest."

The other nodded gently. He was no longer looking straight at him, the secular priest was relieved to see.

"Yes? And what form does it take?"

Still the patient hesitated. He began a sentence or two, and stopped again.

Then the monk lifted his great head and looked straight at him.

"Be quite simple, Monsignor," he said, "you need fear nothing. You are here to be helped, are you not? Then tell me plainly."

Monsignor got up suddenly. It seemed to him that he must move about. He felt restless, as a man who has lived in twilight might feel upon coming out into sudden brilliant and healthful sunlight. He began to walk to and fro. The other said nothing, but the restless man felt that the eyes were watching and following every movement. He reflected that it was unfair to be stared at by eyes that were grey, outlined in black, and crossed by straight lids. Then he summoned his resolution.

"Father," he said, "I am unhappy altogether."

"Yes? (Sit down, please, Monsignor.)"

He sat down, and leaned his forehead on his hands.

"You are unhappy altogether," repeated the monk. "And what form does that unhappiness take?"

Monsignor lifted his face.

"Father," he said, "you know about me? You know about my history? . . . My memory?"

"Yes, I know all that. But it is not that which makes you unhappy?"

"No," cried the priest suddenly and impulsively, "it is not that. I wish to God it were! I wish to God my memory would leave me again!"

"Quietly, please."

But the other paid no attention.

"It is . . . it is the world I am living in--this brutal world.... Father, help me."

The monk drew a breath and leaned back, and his movement had the effect of a call for silence. Neither spoke for a moment.

Then----

"Just tell me quite simply, from the beginning," said the monk.


(VI)

It was nearly half an hour later that Monsignor ended, and leaned back, at once exhausted and excited. He had said it all--he had said even more than he had previously formulated to himself. Now and then, as he paused, the monk with a word or two, or a strangely compelling look, had soothed or encouraged him. And he had told the whole thing--the sense that there was no longer any escape from Christianity, that it had dominated the world, and that it was hateful and tyrannical in its very essence. He confessed that logic was against him, that a wholly Christian society must protect itself, that he saw no way of evading the consequences that he had witnessed; and yet that his entire moral sense revolted against the arguments of his head. It seemed to him, he said in effect, as if he were held in a grip which outraged his whole sentiment; as if the universe itself were in a conspiracy against him. For there was wanting, he said, exactly that which was most characteristic of Christianity, exactly that which made it divine--a heavenly patience and readiness to suffer. The cross had been dropped by the Church, he said, and shouldered by the world.

The monk sat silent a moment or two, as motionless as he had been at the beginning. Monsignor perceived by now, even through his fierce agitation, that this man never moved except for a purpose; he made no gestures when he spoke; he turned his head or lifted his eyes only when it was necessary. Then the monk's voice began again, level and unemotional:

* * * * *


"A great deal of what you say, Monsignor, is merely the effect of a nervous strain. A nervous strain means that the emotional or the receptive faculties gain an undue influence over the reasonable intelligence. You admit that the logic is flawless, yet that fact does not reassure you, as it would if you were in a normal condition."

"But----"

"Wait, please, till I have done. I know what you wish to say. It is that your sense of protest is not merely sentimental, but rather moral; is it not so?"

Monsignor nodded. It was precisely what he had wished to say.

"That is not true, however. It is true that your moral sense seems outraged, but the reason is that you have not yet all the data (the moral sense is a department of the reason, remember). Well, you admit the logic of society's defending itself; but it seems to you that that which is, as you very properly said, the divine characteristic of Christianity--I mean, readiness to suffer rather than to inflict suffering--is absent from the world; that the cross, as you said again, has been dropped by the Church.

"Now, if you will reflect a moment, you will see that it is very natural that that should appear so, in a world that is overwhelmingly Christian. It is very natural that there should not be persecution of Christians, for example, since there is no one to persecute them; and therefore that you should see only the rights of the Church to rule, and not its divine prerogative of pain. But I suppose that if you saw the opposite, if you were to watch the other process, and see that the Church is still able to suffer, and to accept suffering, in a manner in which the world is never capable of suffering, I imagine you would be reassured."

Monsignor drew a long breath.

"I thought so. . . . Well, does not the Contemplative Life reassure you? And are you aware that in Ireland alone there are four millions of persons wholly devoted to the Contemplative Life? And that, so great is the rush of vocations, the continent of Europe----"

"No," cried the priest harshly. "Voluntary suffering is not the same thing. . . . I . . . I long to see Christians suffering at the hands of the world."

"You mean that you are doubtful as to how they would bear it?"

"Yes."

The monk smiled, slowly and brilliantly, and there was a look of such serene confidence in his face that the other was amazed.

"Well . . ." he paused again. "Well, I take it that we have laid our finger upon what it is that troubles you. You admit that the Christian States have a right to punish all who attack the very foundations of their stability----"

"No-I----"

"By your reason, I mean, Monsignor."

"Yes," said Monsignor slowly. "By my reason."

"But that you are not satisfied that the Church can still suffer; that it seems to you she has lost that which is of her very essence. If you saw that, you would be content."

"I suppose so," said the other hesitatingly.

The monk rose abruptly.

"We have talked enough for to-day," he said. "You will kindly spend the rest of the day as yesterday. Do not say Mass in the morning. I will be with you at the same time."


(VII)

It was on the last morning of their stay at Thurles that Monsignor had an opportunity of seeing something of the real character of the place.

The lay monk came to him again, as he was finishing breakfast, and abruptly suggested it.

"I shall be very happy," said Monsignor.

* * * * *


Certainly his stay had done him good in some indefinable manner which he could not altogether understand. Each morning he had talked; but there was no particular argument which he could recall that had convinced him. Indeed, the monk had told him more than once that bare intellectual argument could do nothing except clear the ground of actual fallacies. Certainly the points had been put to him clearly and logically. He perceived now that, so far as reason was concerned, Christian society could not do otherwise than silence those who attacked the very foundations of its existence; and he also understood that this was completely another matter from the charge that men had been accustomed to bring against the Church, that she "would persecute if she had the power." For it was not the Church in any sense that used repression; it was the State that did so; and as Dom Adrian had pointed out, this was of the very essence of all civil government. But this was not new to him. Rather his stay in Thurles had, by quieting his nervous system, made it possible for him to elect to follow his reason rather than his feelings. His feelings were as before. Still in the bottom of his consciousness he felt that the Christ which he had known was other than the Christ who now reigned on earth. But now he had been enabled to make the decision over which he had previously hesitated; he had sufficiently recovered at least so far as to go back to his work and to do what seemed to be the duty to which his reason pointed, and in action at least to ignore his feelings. This much had been done. He did not yet understand by what means.

* * * *