The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

  (IV)

  As the two faced one another for an instant, the Englishmanperceived in a glance that this monk was one of the mostimpressive-looking men he had ever set eyes on. He was well oversix feet in height, and, in his rough, clumsy white dress, heseemed enormously muscular and powerful. He carried himselfloosely, with an air of strength, almost swinging in his gait.But it was his face that above all was remarkable. His hood layback on his shoulders, and from its folds rose his strong throatand head, all as hairless as a statue's; and as the priestglanced at him he saw that strange suggestion as of a bird'shead which some types convey. His nose was long, thin, andcurved; his lips colourless and compressed; his cheeks modelledin folds and hollows over the bones beneath; and his eyes, of anextraordinary 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 thatseemed to enter with him--an atmosphere that from one sideproduced a sense of great fear and helplessness, and on the otherof a kind of security. In an instant Monsignor felt as a woundedchild might feel in the presence of a surgeon. And, throughout theinterview that followed, this sensation deepened incalculably.

  The man said nothing--not even a word of greeting--as he cameacross the room. He just inclined his head a little, with a graveand business-like courtesy, and waved the other back into hischair. Then, still standing himself, he began to speak in a deepbut 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. . . .

  "Meanwhile, for to-day you are at liberty to walk in the courtoutside as much as you wish, to read as you wish--in fact, tooccupy yourself as you like in this room, the ambulatorydownstairs, the roof overhead, and the garden. You are to writeno letters, and to speak to no one. You will have your meals inthe next room alone, where you will also find a few books. I wishyou to get as quiet and controlled as you can. Tomorrow morning Iwill come in again at the same time and give you furtherdirections. You will find a tribune opening out at the end ofthis corridor, looking into a chapel where the Blessed Sacramentis reserved. But I do not wish you to spend there more than onehour 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 feltentirely powerless, and not even desirous to speak. Heunderstood that to obey was simply inevitable, and that silencewas what was wished.

  "I do not wish you to rehearse at all what you intend to say tome to-morrow," went on the monk suddenly. "You are here to showme yourself and your wounds, and there must be no false shame.You will say what you feel to-morrow; and I shall say what Ithink. I wish you a happy retreat."

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

  It was all completely unexpected, and Monsignor sat a fewminutes, astonished, without moving. He had not uttered asyllable; and yet, in a sense, that seemed quite natural. He hadseen the monk look at him keenly as he came in, and was awarethat this had been an inspection by some new kind of expert.Probably the monk had heard the outlines of the case from FatherJervis, and had just looked in this morning, not only to give hisinstructions, but to ratify by some peculiar kind of intuitionthe account he had heard. Yet the ignominy of it all did nottouch him in the least. He felt more than ever like a child inthe hands of an expert, and, like a child, content to be so.Conventions and the mutual little flatteries of the world outsideappeared meaningless here. . . .

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

  The room he was in communicated with a lobby outside, from whicha staircase descended to a little cloistered and glazedambulatory opening on to the garden. Another staircase rose to adoor obviously leading to the roof. Besides the bedroom doorthere were two others: the one which he entered first took himinto a little sitting-room also looking on to the garden, andfurnished simply with a table, an easy chair, and a few books;the other opened directly on to a tiny gallery looking outsideways upon a perfectly plain sanctuary, with a stone altar, alamp, and a curtained tabernacle, which seemed to be a chapel ofsome church whose roof only was visible beyond a high closedscreen. He knelt here a minute or two, then he passed back againto the lobby and ascended the staircase leading to the roof. Hethought that from here he might form some idea as to the placein which he was.

  The flat roof, tiled across, and guttered so as to allow therainwater to escape, at first seemed closed in on all sides withwalls over six feet high. Then he perceived that each wall waspierced with a tiny double window, so contrived that it waspossible to see out easily and comfortably without being seen. Hewent straight to one of these and looked through.

  As far as he could see stretched what looked like the roofs of agreat town, for the most part flattish, but broken here andthere, and especially towards the horizon, by tall buildingspierced with windows, and in three or four cases by churchtowers. Immediately beneath him lay a vast courtyard like that ofa college, with a cluster of elms, ruddy with autumn colours, inthe midst of the central lawn. There was no human being in sighton this side; the roofs, many of them parapeted like his own,stretched out into the distance, their ranks here and therebroken by lines which appeared to indicate roadways runningbeneath. He saw a couple of cats on the grass below.

  On all sides, as he went from window to window of the littleroofless space, there was the same kind of prospect. In onedirection he thought he recognized the way he must have comelast night; and, looking more carefully, noticed that the townseemed to be less extended in that direction. Half a mile awaythe roofs ceased, standing up against a mass of foliage thatblotted out all beyond. It was here that he caught sight of aman--a white figure that crossed a patch of road that curvedinto sight and out again.

  It was extraordinarily still in this Religious town. Certainlythere were a few sounds; a noise of far-off hammering came fromsomewhere and presently ceased. Once he heard a door close andfootsteps on stone that faded into silence; once he heard thecry of a cat, three or four times repeated; and once, alltogether, from every direction at once, sounded bells, eachstriking one stroke.

  He began to walk up and down after a while, marvelling, trying toreconstruct his ideas once more, and to take in the astonishingsystem and organization whose signs were so evident about him.Certainly it was thorough and efficient. There must be countlessinstitutions--hospitals, retreat-houses, cloisters, besides allthe offices and business centres necessary for carrying on thistremendous work; and yet practically no indication of anymovement or bustle made itself apparent. So far as solitude wasconcerned, he might be imprisoned in a dead city. And all thisdeepened his impressions of peace and recuperation. The silence,through his knowledge, was alive to him. There must be, almostwithin sound of a shout, hundreds of living persons like himself,yet all intent, in some form or another, upon that sameoverwhelming silence in which facts could be received andrelations readjusted.

  Yet even this, as he reflected upon it, had certain elements ofterror. Here again, under another disguise, was the force thathe had feared in London--the force that had sent Dom Adriannoiselessly out of life, that proposed to deal with refractoryinstincts in human nature--such as manifested themselves inSocialism--as a householder might deal with a plague of mice,drastically and irresistibly; the force that moved the wheelsand drove the soundless engines of that tremendoussocial-religious machine of which he too was a part. It was heretoo then; it was this that had closed him in here for three daysin his tiny domicile in this great dumb city; it was this thatheld the whole under an invisible discipline; it was this thathad looked at him out of the hawk's-eyes, and spoken to himthrough the colourless lips of the monk who had given him hisinstructions this morning. . . .

  Once more then his individuality began to reassert itself, and t
oattempt to cast off the spell even of this peace that promisedrelief. 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 aboutthese matters. Father Jervis and the Carthusian no doubt hadtalked him over; they accepted as an established and self-evidentphilosophy this universal unity and authority; they regardedhimself, who could not yet so accept it, as a spiritual, if notan actual mental invalid. . . . He had been brought here to betreated. . . . Well, he would hold his own.

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

  He walked more and more quickly and abruptly up and down thelittle tiled space. He was conscious of a conflict all confusedwith dust and smoke. He began to hesitate as to which was thehigher, even which was the tolerable course--to sink hisindividuality, to throw up his hands and drown, or to assert thatindividuality openly and defiantly, and to take the consequences.