Dawn of All — Part 2, Chapter 4

(I)

"I'm afraid it's been a great shock," said Father Jervis soothingly.

"And I'm not surprised, after your illness.

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Yes I quite see your point.

Of course it must seem very strange.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(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 .

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or .

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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 .

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he had been alive at this hour last night and now .

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Well, he had passed to the Secret which this world interpreted now so confidently.

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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.

(III)

Monsignor woke next morning, already conscious of a certain sense of well-being, and looked round the little white room in which he lay, agreeably expectant.

* * * * * Last night had helped to soothe him a little.

He had supped with his friend in a small parlour downstairs, after having been warned not to speak, except in case of absolute necessity, to the lay-brother who waited on them; and after supper had had explained to him more at length what the object of the expedition really was.

It was the custom, he heard, for persons suffering from overstrain or depression, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, to come across to Ireland to one of those Religious Houses with which the whole country was covered.

The only thing demanded of these retreatants was that they should obey, absolutely and implicitly, the directions given to them during their stay, and that their stay should not be less than for three full days.

"We shall not meet after to-night," said Father Jervis, smiling, "I shall be under as strict orders as you."

After they had parted for the night, the man who had lost his memory had studied the little book given to him, and had learned more or less the system under which Ireland lay.

The whole island, he learned, was the absolute and inalienable possession, held under European guarantees, of the enclosed Religious Orders, with whose dominion no interference was allowed.

All the business offices of the country and the ports of the enormous agricultural industries were concentrated in Dublin and Belfast; the rest of the island was cultivated, ruled, and cared for by the monks themselves.

(He read drearily through the pages of statistics showing how once again, as in medieval days, under the labour of monks the land had blossomed out into material prosperity; and how this prosperity still increased, year by year, beyond all reckoning.

) Of men, there were the Carthusians, the Carmelites, the Trappists, and certain sections of Benedictines; of women, there were the Carmelites, the Poor Clares, the Augustinian canonesses, and certain other Benedictines.

Special arrangements between these regulated the division of the land and of the responsibilities; and the Central Council consisted of the Procurators and other representatives of the various bodies.

In return for the possession of the land, and for the protection guaranteed by the European governments, one, and one only demand was made--namely, that a certain accommodation should be offered--the amount determined by agreement year by year--both for these Retreat-houses in general, and for what were called "Hospitals-of-God" in particular.

These hospitals were nothing else in reality than enormous establishments for the treatment of the mentally unbalanced; for it had been found by recent experience that the atmosphere supremely successful in such cases--especially those of certain well-marked types--was the atmosphere of the strongest and most intense religion.

Statistics had shown without a doubt that, even apart from cases of actual possession (a phenomenon perfectly recognized now by all scientists), minds that were merely weak or subject to mental delusions recovered incalculably more quickly and surely in the atmosphere of a Religious House than in any other.

These cases too were isolated with the greatest care, owing to the extraordinary discoveries recently made, and verified over and over again in the realm of "mental infection."

So Monsignor had learned last night; and as he lay in his little white room this morning, waiting for the instructions that, he had been informed, would arrive before he need get up, it seemed that even to his own tortured brain some breath of relief had already come.

The world seemed perfectly still.

Once from far away he heard the note of a single deep-toned bell; but, for the rest, there was silence.

There was no footstep in the house, no footstep outside.

From where he lay he could see out through his low window into a tiny high-walled court, white like his own room, except where the level lawn ran to the foot of the wall and a row of tawny autumn flowers rose against it.

Above the white carved parapet opposite ran skeins of delicate cloud against the soft blue sky.

It was strange, he thought, to be conscious in this utter solitude and silence of an incomparable peace.

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When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the hooded lay brother had come in while he dozed, and had begun to set the room to rights.

A door, white like the wall, which he had not noticed last night, stood open opposite his bed, and he caught sight of a tiny bathroom beyond.

A little fire of wood was leaping in the white-tiled chimney; and before it stood a table.

The window too was set open, and the pleasant autumn air streamed in.

Then the brother came up to the bedside, his face invisible under the peaked hood that hung over it.

He uttered a sentence or two in Latin, bidding him get up and dress.

He was not to say Mass this morning.

"Father" would come in as soon as he had breakfasted and give him his instructions for the day.

That was all.

Monsignor got out of bed and went into the bathroom, where his clothes were already arranged.

When he came back a quarter of an hour later, he found a tray set out with simple food and milk on the table beside the fire.

As he finished and said grace the door opened noiselessly, and a priest in the Carthusian habit came in, closing the door behind him.

(IV)

As the two faced one another for an instant, the Englishman perceived in a glance that this monk was one of the most impressive-looking men he had ever set eyes on.

He was well over six feet in height, and, in his rough, clumsy white dress, he seemed enormously muscular and powerful.

He carried himself loosely, with an air of strength, almost swinging in his gait.

But it was his face that above all was remarkable.

His hood lay back on his shoulders, and from its folds rose his strong throat and head, all as hairless as a statue's; and as the priest glanced at him he saw that strange suggestion as of a bird's head which some types convey.

His nose was long, thin, and curved; his lips colourless and compressed; his cheeks modelled in folds and hollows over the bones beneath; and his eyes, of an extraordinary light grey, looked out under straight upper lids, as of an eagle.

So much for the physical side.

But, stranger than all this, was the unmistakable atmosphere that seemed to enter with him--an atmosphere that from one side produced a sense of great fear and helplessness, and on the other of a kind of security.

In an instant Monsignor felt as a wounded child might feel in the presence of a surgeon.

And, throughout the interview that followed, this sensation deepened incalculably.

The man said nothing--not even a word of greeting--as he came across the room.

He just inclined his head a little, with a grave and business-like courtesy, and waved the other back into his chair.

Then, still standing himself, he began to speak in a deep but quite quiet voice, and very slowly and distinctly.

"You understand, Monsignor, the terms on which you are here?

Yes.

Very well.

I do not wish you to say Mass until your last morning.

I have spoken to Father Jervis about you.

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"Meanwhile, for to-day you are at liberty to walk in the court outside as much as you wish, to read as you wish--in fact, to occupy yourself as you like in this room, the ambulatory downstairs, the roof overhead, and the garden.

You are to write no letters, and to speak to no one.

You will have your meals in the next room alone, where you will also find a few books.

I wish you to get as quiet and controlled as you can.

Tomorrow morning I will come in again at the same time and give you further directions.

You will find a tribune opening out at the end of this corridor, looking into a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved.

But I do not wish you to spend there more than one hour in the course of the day."

The monk was silent again, and did not even raise his eyes.

Monsignor said nothing.

There was really nothing to say.

He felt entirely powerless, and not even desirous to speak.

He understood that to obey was simply inevitable, and that silence was what was wished.

"I do not wish you to rehearse at all what you intend to say to me to-morrow," went on the monk suddenly.

"You are here to show me yourself and your wounds, and there must be no false shame.

You will say what you feel to-morrow; and I shall say what I think.

I wish you a happy retreat."

Then, again without a word, but with that same inclination of his head, he went swiftly across the room and was gone.

It was all completely unexpected, and Monsignor sat a few minutes, astonished, without moving.

He had not uttered a syllable; and yet, in a sense, that seemed quite natural.

He had seen the monk look at him keenly as he came in, and was aware that this had been an inspection by some new kind of expert.

Probably the monk had heard the outlines of the case from Father Jervis, and had just looked in this morning, not only to give his instructions, but to ratify by some peculiar kind of intuition the account he had heard.

Yet the ignominy of it all did not touch him in the least.

He felt more than ever like a child in the hands of an expert, and, like a child, content to be so.

Conventions and the mutual little flatteries of the world outside appeared meaningless here.

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He said some Office presently, and then set out to explore his ground.

The room he was in communicated with a lobby outside, from which a staircase descended to a little cloistered and glazed ambulatory opening on to the garden.

Another staircase rose to a door obviously leading to the roof.

Besides the bedroom door there were two others: the one which he entered first took him into a little sitting-room also looking on to the garden, and furnished simply with a table, an easy chair, and a few books;

the other opened directly on to a tiny gallery looking out sideways upon a perfectly plain sanctuary, with a stone altar, a lamp, and a curtained tabernacle, which seemed to be a chapel of some church whose roof only was visible beyond a high closed screen.

He knelt here a minute or two, then he passed back again to the lobby and ascended the staircase leading to the roof.

He thought that from here he might form some idea as to the place in which he was.

The flat roof, tiled across, and guttered so as to allow the rainwater to escape, at first seemed closed in on all sides with walls over six feet high.

Then he perceived that each wall was pierced with a tiny double window, so contrived that it was possible to see out easily and comfortably without being seen.

He went straight to one of these and looked through.

As far as he could see stretched what looked like the roofs of a great town, for the most part flattish, but broken here and there, and especially towards the horizon, by tall buildings pierced with windows, and in three or four cases by church towers.

Immediately beneath him lay a vast courtyard like that of a college, with a cluster of elms, ruddy with autumn colours, in the midst of the central lawn.

There was no human being in sight on this side; the roofs, many of them parapeted like his own, stretched out into the distance, their ranks here and there broken by lines which appeared to indicate roadways running beneath.

He saw a couple of cats on the grass below.

On all sides, as he went from window to window of the little roofless space, there was the same kind of prospect.

In one direction he thought he recognized the way he must have come last night; and, looking more carefully, noticed that the town seemed to be less extended in that direction.

Half a mile away the roofs ceased, standing up against a mass of foliage that blotted out all beyond.

It was here that he caught sight of a man--a white figure that crossed a patch of road that curved into sight and out again.

It was extraordinarily still in this Religious town.

Certainly there were a few sounds; a noise of far-off hammering came from somewhere and presently ceased.

Once he heard a door close and footsteps on stone that faded into silence; once he heard the cry of a cat, three or four times repeated; and once, all together, from every direction at once, sounded bells, each striking one stroke.

He began to walk up and down after a while, marvelling, trying to reconstruct his ideas once more, and to take in the astonishing system and organization whose signs were so evident about him.

Certainly it was thorough and efficient.

There must be countless institutions--hospitals, retreat-houses, cloisters, besides all the offices and business centres necessary for carrying on this tremendous work; and yet practically no indication of any movement or bustle made itself apparent.

So far as solitude was concerned, he might be imprisoned in a dead city.

And all this deepened his impressions of peace and recuperation.

The silence, through his knowledge, was alive to him.

There must be, almost within sound of a shout, hundreds of living persons like himself, yet all intent, in some form or another, upon that same overwhelming silence in which facts could be received and relations readjusted.

Yet even this, as he reflected upon it, had certain elements of terror.

Here again, under another disguise, was the force that he had feared in London--the force that had sent Dom Adrian noiselessly out of life, that proposed to deal with refractory instincts in human nature--such as manifested themselves in Socialism--as a householder might deal with a plague of mice, drastically and irresistibly; the force that moved the wheels and drove the soundless engines of that tremendous social-religious machine of which he too was a part.

It was here too then; it was this that had closed him in here for three days in his tiny domicile in this great dumb city; it was this that held the whole under an invisible discipline; it was this that had looked at him out of the hawk's-eyes, and spoken to him through the colourless lips of the monk who had given him his instructions this morning.

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Once more then his individuality began to reassert itself, and to attempt to cast off the spell even of this peace that promised relief.

He became aware of an extraordinary loneliness of soul, an isolation in the deepest regions of his soul from all others.

The rest of the world, it seemed, had an understanding about these matters.

Father Jervis and the Carthusian no doubt had talked him over; they accepted as an established and self-evident philosophy this universal unity and authority; they regarded himself, who could not yet so accept it, as a spiritual, if not an actual mental invalid.

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He had been brought here to be treated.

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