A HIGHER STEP
As Chris, on the eve of his profession, looked back over the year that
had passed since his reception at the guest-house, he scarcely knew
whether it seemed like a week or a century. At times it appeared as if
the old life in the world were a kind of far-away picture in which he
saw himself as one detached from his present personality, moving among
curious scenes in which now he had no part; at other times the familiar
past rushed on him fiercely, deafened him with its appeal, and claimed
him as its own. In such moods the monastery was an intolerable prison,
the day’s round an empty heart-breaking formality in which his soul was
being stifled, and even his habit, which he had once touched so
reverently, the badge of a fool.
The life of the world at such times seemed to him the only sanity; these
men used the powers that God had given them, were content with simple
and unostentatious doings and interests, reached the higher vocation by
their very naiveté, and did not seek to fly on wings that were not meant
to bear them. How sensible, Christopher told himself, was Ralph’s ideal!
God had made the world, so Ralph lived in it--a world in which great and
small affairs were carried on, and in which he interested himself. God
had made horses and hawks, had provided materials for carriages and fine
clothes and cross-bows, had formed the sexes and allowed for love and
domestic matters, had created brains with their capacities of passion
and intellect; and so Ralph had taken these things as he found them,
hunted, dressed, lived, managed and mixed with men. At times in his cell
Chris saw that imposing figure in all its quiet bravery of dress, that
sane, clever face, those pitying and contemptuous eyes looking at him,
and heard the well-bred voice asking and commenting and wondering at the
misguided zeal of a brother who could give all this up, and seek to live
a life that was built on and sustained by illusions.
One event during his first six months of the novitiate helped to
solemnise him and to clear the confusion.
Old Dom Augustine was taken sick and died, and Chris for the first time
in his life watched the melting tragedy of death. The old monk had been
moved from the dormitory to the sick-room when the end seemed imminent,
and one afternoon Chris noticed the little table set outside the door,
with its candles and crucifix, the basin of cotton-wool, and the other
signs that the last sacraments were to be administered. He knew little
of the old man, except his bleared face and shaking hands as he had
seen them in choir, and had never been greatly impressed by him; but it
was another matter when in the evening of the same day, at his master’s
order he passed into the cell and knelt down with the others to see the
end.
The old monk was lying now on the cross of ashes that had been spread on
the floor; his features looked pinched and white in the candlelight; his
old mouth moved incessantly, and opened now and again to gasp; but there
was an august dignity on his face that Chris had never seen there
before.
Outside the night was still and frosty; only now and again the heavy
stroke of the bell told the town that a soul was passing.
Dom Augustine had received Viaticum an hour before. Chris had heard the
steady tinkle of the bell, like the sound of Aaron’s garments, as the
priest who had brought him Communion passed back with his sacred burden,
and Chris had fallen on his knees where he stood as he caught a glimpse
of the white procession passing back to the church, their frosty breath
going up together in the winter night air, the wheeling shadows, and the
glare of the torches giving a pleasant warm light in the dull cloister.
But all that was over now, and the end was at hand.
As Chris knelt there, mechanically responding to the prayers on which
the monk’s soul was beginning to lift itself and flutter for escape,
there fell a great solemnity on his spirit. The thought, as old as
death, made itself real to him, that this was the end of every man and
of himself too. Where Dom Augustine lay, he would lie, with his past
behind him, of which every detail would be instinct with eternal import.
All the tiny things of the monastic life--the rising in time for the
night office, attention during it, the responses to grace, the little
movements prescribed by etiquette, the invisible motions of a soul that
had or had not acted for the love of God, those stirrings, falls,
aspirations, that incessant activity of eighty years--all so incredibly
minute from one point of view, so incredibly weighty from another--the
account of all those things was to be handed in now, and an eternal
judgment given.
He looked at the wearied, pained old face again, at the tight-shut eyes,
the jerking movements of the unshaven lips, and wondered what was
passing behind;--what strange colloquy of the soul with itself or its
Master or great personages of the Court of Heaven. And all was set in
this little bare setting of white walls, a tumbled bed, a shuttered
window, a guttering candle or two, a cross of ashes on boards, a ring
of faces, and a murmur of prayers!
The solemnity rose and fell in Chris’s soul like a deep organ-note
sounding and waning. How homely and tender were these last rites, this
accompaniment of the departing soul to the edge of eternity with all
that was dear and familiar to it--the drops of holy water, the mellow
light of candles, and the sonorous soothing Latin! And yet--and yet--how
powerless to save a soul that had not troubled to make the necessary
efforts during life, and had lost the power of making them now!
* * * * *
When all was over he went out of the cell with an indescribable gravity
at his heart.
* * * * *
When the great events in the spring of ’34 began to take place, Chris
was in a period of abstracted peace, and the rumours of them came to him
as cries from another planet.
Dom Anthony Marks came into the cloister one day from the guest-house
with a great excitement in his face.
“Here is news!” he said, joining himself to Chris and another young monk
with whom the lonely novice was sometimes allowed to walk. “Master
Humphreys, from London, tells me they are all in a ferment there.”
Chris looked at him with a deferential coldness, and waited for more.
“They say that Master More hath refused the oath, and that he is lodged
in the Tower, and my Lord of Rochester too.”
The young monk burst into exclamations and questions, but Chris was
silent. It was sad enough, but what did it matter to him? What did it
really matter to anyone? God was King.
Dom Anthony was in a hurry, and scuffled off presently to tell the
Prior, and in an hour or two there was an air of excitement through the
house. Chris, however, heard nothing more except the little that the
novice-master chose to tell him, and felt a certain contempt for the
anxious-eyed monks who broke the silence by whispers behind doors, and
the peace of the monastery by their perturbed looks.
* * * * *
Even when a little later in the summer the commissioner came down to
tender the oath of succession Chris heard little and cared less. He was
aware of a fine gentleman striding through the cloister, lolling in the
garth, and occupying a prominent seat in the church; he noticed that his
master was long in coming to him after the protracted chapter-meetings,
but it appeared to him all rather an irrelevant matter. These things
were surely quite apart from the business for which they were all
gathered in the house--the _opus Dei_ and the salvation of souls; this
or that legal document did not seriously affect such high matters.
The novice-master told him presently that the community had signed the
oath, as all others were doing, and that there was no need for anxiety:
they were in the hands of their Religious Superiors.
“I was not anxious,” said Chris abruptly, and Dom James hastened to snub
him, and to tell him that he ought to have been, but that novices always
thought they knew everything, and were the chief troubles that Religious
houses had to put up with.
Chris courteously begged pardon, and went to his lessons wondering what
in the world all the pother was about.
But such moods of detachment were not continuous; they visited him for
weeks at a time, when his soul was full of consolation, and he was
amazed that any other life seemed possible to anyone. He seemed to
himself to have reached the very heart and secret of existence--surely
it was plain enough; God and eternity were the only things worth
considering; a life passed in an ecstasy, if such were possible, was
surely more consonant with reality than one of ordinary activities.
Activities were, after all, but concessions to human weakness and desire
for variety; contemplation was the simple and natural attitude of a soul
that knew herself and God.
But he was a man as well as a novice, and when these moods ebbed from
his soul they left him strangely bitter and dry: the clouds would
gather; the wind of discontent would begin to shrill about the angles of
his spirit, and presently the storm of desolation would be up.
He had one such tempestuous mood immediately before his profession.
During its stress he had received a letter from his father which he was
allowed to read, in which Sir James half hinted at the advisability of
postponing the irrevocable step until things were quieter, and his heart
had leaped at the possibility of escape. He did not know till then how
strong had grown the motive of appearing well in the eyes of his
relatives and of fearing to lose their respect by drawing back; and now
that his father, too, seemed to suggest that he had better re-consider
himself, it appeared that a door was opened in the high monastery wall
through which he might go through and take his honour with him.
He passed through a terrible struggle that night.
Never had the night-office seemed so wearisomely barren. The glamour
that had lighted those dark walls and the double row of cowls and
down-bent faces, the mystical beauty of the single flames here and
there that threw patches of light on the carving of the stalls and the
sombre habits, and gave visibility and significance to what without them
was obscure, the strange suggestiveness of the high-groined roof and the
higher vault glimmering through the summer darkness--all this had faded
and left him, as it seemed, sane and perceptive of facts at last. Out
there through those transepts lay the town where reasonable folk slept,
husband and wife together, and the children in the great bed next door,
with the tranquil ordinary day behind them and its fellow before; there
were the streets, still now and dark and empty but for the sleeping
dogs, where the signs swung and the upper stories leaned together, and
where the common life had been transacted since the birth of the town
and would continue till its decay. And beyond lay the cool round hills,
with their dark dewy slopes, over which he had ridden a year ago, and
all England beyond them again, with its human life and affairs and
interests; and over all hung the serene stars whence God looked down
well pleased with all that He had made.
And, meanwhile, here he stood in his stall in his night shoes and black
habit and cropped head, propped on his misericorde, with the great pages
open before him, thumbed and greasy at their corners, from which he was
repeating in a loud monotone formula after formula that had had time to
grow familiar from repetition, but not yet sweet from associations--here
he stood with heavy eyelids after his short sleep, his feet aching and
hot, and his whole soul rebellious.
* * * * *
He was sent by his novice-master next day to the Prior, with his
father’s letter in his hand, and stood humbly by the door while the
Prior read it. Chris watched him under half-raised eye-lids; saw the
clean-cut profile with its delicate mouth bent over the paper, and the
hand with the enamelled ring turn the page. Prior Crowham was a
cultivated, well-bred man, not over strong-willed, but courteous and
sympathetic. He turned a little to Chris in his carved chair, as he laid
the letter down.
“Well,” he said, smiling, “it is for you to choose whether you will
offer yourself. Of course, there is uneasiness abroad, as this letter
says, but what then?”
He smiled pleasantly at the young man, and Chris felt a little ashamed.
There was silence for a moment.
“It is for you to choose,” said the Prior again, “you have been happy
with us, I think?”
Chris pressed his lips together and looked down.
“Of course Satan will not leave you alone,” went on the monk presently.
“He will suggest many reasons against your profession. If he did not, I
should be afraid that you had no vocation.”
Again he waited for an answer, and again Chris was silent. His soul was
so desolate that he could not trust himself to say all that he felt.
“You must wait a little,” went on the Prior, “recommend yourself to our
Lady and our Patron, and then leave yourself in their hands. You will
know better when you have had a few days. Will you do this, and then
come to me again?”
“Yes, my Lord Prior,” said Chris, and he took up the letter, bowed, and
went out.
* * * * *
Within the week relief and knowledge came to him. He had done what the
monk had told him, and it had been followed by a curious sense of relief
at the thought suggested to him that the responsibility of decision did
not rest on him but on his heavenly helpers. And then as he served mass
the answer came.
It was in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, a little building entered
from the north transept, with its windows opening directly on to the
road leading up into the town; there was no one there but the two. It
was about seven o’clock on the feast of the Seven Martyrs, and the
chapel was full of a diffused tender morning light, for the chapel was
sheltered from the direct sunshine by the tall church on its south.
As they went up to the altar the bell sounded for the Elevation at the
high-altar of the church, at the _missa familiaris_, and the footstep of
someone passing through the north transept ceased instantly at the
sound. The priest ascended the steps, set down the vessels, spread the
corporal, opened the book, and came down again for the preparation.
There was no one else in the chapel, and the peace of the place in the
summer light, only vitalized by the brisk chirping of a sparrow under
the eaves, entered into Christopher’s soul.
As the mass went on it seemed as if a veil were lifting from his spirit,
and leaving it free and sensible again. The things around him fell into
their proper relationships, and there was no doubt in his mind that this
newly restored significance of theirs was their true interpretation.
They seemed penetrated and suffused by the light of the inner world; the
red-brocaded chasuble moving on a level with his eyes, stirring with the
shifting of the priest’s elbows, was more than a piece of rich stuff,
the white alb beneath more than mere linen, the hood thrown back in the
amice a sacramental thing. He looked up at the smoky yellow flames
against the painted woodwork at the back of the altar, at the
discoloured stones beside the grey window-mouldings still with the
slanting marks of the chisel upon them, at the black rafters overhead,
and last out through the shafted window at the heavy July foliage of the
elm that stood by the road and the brilliant morning sky beyond; and
once more he saw what these things meant and conveyed to an immortal
soul. The words that he had said during these last weeks so mechanically
were now rich and alive again, and as he answered the priest he
perceived the spiritual vibration of them in the inner world of which
his own soul was but a part. And then the climax was reached, and he
lifted the skirt of the vestment with his left hand and shook the bell
in his right; the last shreds of confusion were gone, and his spirit
basked tranquil and content and certain again in the light that was
newly risen on him.
He went to the novice-master after the morning-chapter, and told him
that he had made up his mind to offer himself for profession if it was
thought advisable by the authorities.
* * * * *
Towards the end of August he presented himself once more before the
chapter to make his solemn demand; his petition was granted, and a day
appointed for his profession.
Then he withdrew into yet stricter seclusion to prepare for the step.