The Dawn of All Part 26

"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 s.p.a.ce: 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.sert inalienable rights--in short, that a revolution had pa.s.sed 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--G.o.d?

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 compa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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."