The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

  (III)

  A great restlessness seized upon the man who had lost hismemory that night.

  He had thought after his return from abroad that things were wellwith him again--that he had learned the principles of this worldthat was so strange to him; and his busy days--all that had to bedone and recovered, and his success in doing it--these things atonce distracted and soothed him. And now once more he was back inhis bewilderment.

  One great principle it was which confused his whole outlook--theemployment of force upon the side of Christianity. Here, on thelarge scale, was the forcible repression of the Socialists; on asmall scale, the punishment of a heretic. What kind of religionwas this that preached gentleness and practised violence? . . .

  Between eleven and twelve o'clock he could bear it no longer. Thehouse was quiet, and the lights for the most part gone out. Hetook his hat and thin cloak, throwing this round him so as tohide the purple at his throat, went softly down the corridors andstairs, and let himself out noiselessly into Ambrosden Avenue. Hefelt he must have air and space: he was beginning almost to hatethis silent, well-ordered ecclesiastical house, where wheels ranso 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 superficialfaculties paid attention to the great quiet lighted thoroughfare,to the few figures that moved along, to the scattered sentinelsof the City of Westminster police in their blue and silver, whohere and there stood at the corners of the cross-streets, whosaluted him as he went by; to the little lighted shrines thathere and there hung at the angles. Certainly it was a Catholiccity, he perceived in his bitterness, drilled and disciplined byits religion; there was no noise, no glare, no apparent evil. Andthe marvel was that the people seemed to love to have it so! Heremembered questioning a friend or two soon after his return toEngland as to the revival of these Curfew laws, and thextraordinary vigilance over morals; and the answer he hadreceived to the effect that those things were taken now as amatter of course. One priest had told him that civilization inthe modern sense would be inconceivable without them. How elsecould the few rule the many? . . .

  He came down, across Parliament Square, to the river at last,walking swiftly and purposelessly. A high gateway, with aguard-room on either side, spanned the entrance to the widebridge that sprang across to Southwark, and an officer steppedout 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, sofar as he could see, ran straight over to the south side, where,once again, there rose up the guard-house. He turned sharply whenhe saw it, and leaned on the parapet looking eastwards.

  The eternal river flowed beneath him, clean and steady andstrong, between the high embankments. (He knew by now all aboutthe lock-system that counteracted the ebb and flow of the tides.)Scarcely a hundred yards away curved out another bridge, andbehind that another and another, down into the distance, alloutlined in half-lights that shone like stars and flashed backlike heaven itself from the smooth-running water beneath. Anextraordinary silence lay over all--the silence of a sleepingcity--though it was scarcely yet midnight, and though the cityitself on either side of the river lay white and glowing in thelights that burned everywhere till dawn.

  At first it quieted him--this vision of earthly peace, thisperfection to which order and civilization had come; and then, ashe regarded it, it enraged him. . . .

  For was not this very vision an embodiment of the force that hehated? It was this very thing that oppressed and confined hisspirit--this inexorable application of eternal principles totemporal affairs. Here was a city of living men, each anindividual personality, of individual tastes, thoughts, andpassions, each a world to himself and monarch of that world. Yetby some abominable trick, it seemed, these individuals were notmerely in external matters forced to conform to the Society whichthey helped to compose, but interiorly too; they actually hadbeen tyrannized over in their consciences and judgments, andloved their chains. If he had known that the fires of revolt laythere sleeping beneath this smooth exterior he would have hatedit far less; but he had seen with his own eyes that it was notso. The crowds that had swarmed a while ago round the Cathedral,pouring in and filling it for the _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving thatone more country had been brought under the yoke; the sea offaces that had softly applauded and bowed beneath the blessing ofthose two Cardinals in scarlet; the enthusiasm, the more amazingin its silent orderliness, which had greeted the restoration ofthe old national Abbey to its Benedictine founders--even the veryinterviews he had had with quiet, deferential men, who, heunderstood, stood at the very head of the secular powers; thememory of the young King kissing the ring of the abbot at thesteps into the choir--all these things proved plainly enough thatby some supernatural alchemy the very minds of men had beentransformed, that they were no longer free to rebel and resentand assert inalienable rights--in short, that a revolution hadpassed 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 tothe Society which they composed.

  He perceived now clearly that it was this forced contributionthat he hated---this merging of the individual in the body, andthe body one of principles that were at once precise andimmutable. It was the extinction of Self.

  Then, almost without perceiving the connection, he turned in hismind to Christianity as he conceived it to be--to his idealfigure of Christ; and in an instant he saw the contrast, and whyit was that the moral instinct within him loathed and resentedthis 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 earthlypurposes of love and imitation, a meek and persuasive Man whosekingdom was not of this world, who repudiated violence andinculcated love; One who went through the world with simple tasksand soft words, who suffered without striking, who obeyed with nodesire to rule.

  And what had this tranquil, tolerant Figure in common with thestrong discipline of this Church that bore His name--a Churchthat had waited so long, preaching His precepts, until she grewmighty and could afford to let them drop: this Church which,after centuries of blood and tears, at last had laid her handsupon the sceptre, and ruled the world with whom she had pleadedin vain so long; this Church who, after two thousand years ofpain, had at last put her enemies under her feet--"repressed" theinfidel and killed the heretic?

  And so the interior conflict went on within this man, who foundwithin him a Christianity with which the Christian world in whichhe lived had no share or part. He still stared out in the softautumn night at the huge quiet city, his chin on his hands andhis elbows on the parapet, half perceiving the parable at whichhe looked. Once it was this river beneath him that had made thecity; now the city set the river within bars and ordered itsgoings. Once it was Christianity--the meek and gentle spirit ofChrist--that had made civilization; now civilization had fetteredChristianity in unbreakable chains. . . . Yet even as he resentedand rebelled, he felt he dared not speak. There were great forcesabout him, forces he had experienced for himself--Science tamedat last, self-control, organization, and a Peace which he couldnot understand. Every man with whom he had to do seemed kind andtender; there was the patient old priest who taught him and borewith him as with a child, the fatherly cardinal, the quiet,serene ecclesiastics of the house in which he lived, thecontrolled 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 thathe but half understood, was the very thing that made it run sosmoothly. It had the horror of a perfectly controlled steelpis
ton that moves as delicately as a feather fan.

  For he saw how inexorable was that strength which controlled theworld; 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 allthat wide world in which he lived it seemed that there was notone Christian who recoiled, not one breath of public opinion thatcould express itself.

  And he--he who hated it--must take his part. A Fate utterlybeyond his understanding had set him there as a wheel in thatmighty machine; and he must revolve in his place motionlessly andunresistingly in whatever task was set before him. . . .

  Once only, as he stared out at the great prosperous view, did hisheart sicken and fail him. He dropped his face upon his hands,and cried to the only Christ whom he knew in silence. . . .

  CHAPTER III