THE VIGIL
§1
Night or day, the ship ploughed remorselessly on. It was steered a
bewildering zigzag course to outwit the submarines. The second day
of the voyage saw us in the Bay of Biscay, a hundred miles off Cape
Finisterre. The sun got steadily hotter, and the sea bluer.
And the subalterns blessed the sun, because it gave them an excuse
for putting on the white tennis-flannels which they had brought for
deck wear. All honest boys, we know, fancy themselves in their
whites. And the mention of their deck-flannels reminds me, strangely
enough, of Monty's daily masses. It was evident from the attendance
at these quiet little services that he had been busy persuading
other young officers to see "how it worked."
Every morning the smoking room was equipped with a little altar that
supported two lighted candles. And to this chapel there wandered,
morning after morning, stray and rather shy young subalterns, who
knelt "beneath the shadow," occupied with their own thoughts, while
Calvary's ancient sacrifice was acted before God.
Monty had formed a dozen subalterns into a guild of servers. And on
these sun-baked mornings he would insist that his servers should
kneel at their place beside the altar in their white sporting
attire. "_His_ Mass," said he, "was meant to be mixed up with the
week-day play."
It was all quiet--in fact, ever so quiet. Outside on the deck there
would be noises, and in the alley-way there would be bangings of
cabin-doors, and voices calling for the bath steward. But these
things only intensified the quiet of the smoking room. Monty would
keep his voice very low, loud enough to be heard by those who
wished to follow him, and soft enough not to interrupt those who
preferred to pursue their private devotions.
Whether he was right in all that he did and taught, or was only a
joyous rebel, better theologians than I must determine. He was at
least right in this: the attraction of that early morning service
was irresistible. I began to look forward to it. I enjoyed it. When
my comfortable bunk pulled strongly, and I was too lazy to get up, I
would feel all day a sense of having missed something. I had never
been able to pray anywhere else so easily as I prayed there. I had
never before understood the satisfaction of worship.
Monty soon found that the only enemy who could beat him and prevent
a swelling attendance of Youth at the Mass, was Cosy Bed. C.B., as
he contemptuously called him, was most powerful at 7.0 in the
morning. Padre Monty would not have been Padre Monty, had he failed
to declare war on the foe at once. He drew up a "Waking List" of his
family (for he had adopted everybody on the ship under 25), and each
morning went his rounds, visiting a score of cabins, where the
"children" slept. He burst upon them unceremoniously, and threw open
the darkened port-holes to let the sunlight in. For the sunlight,
like all bright things, was on the side of the Mass.
Of course it was only a minority, at best, who thus bowed their
young heads to the Mass. The rest remained gentiles without the Law.
And Monty's undismayed comment was characteristic of him. "I say,
Rupert," he said, coolly assuming that I was his partner in the
work, "We've only a few at present, our apostolic few. But don't you
love these big, handsome boys, who _will not_ come to church?"
One immortal Friday fully forty wandered in to Mass. Monty was
radiant. Immediately after the service he said to me: "Come on deck,
and have a game of quoits-tennis before breakfast. Mass first, then
tennis--that's as it should be." We went on deck, and, having fixed
the rope that acted as a net, played a hard game. And, when the
first game was finished, Monty, still flushed with his victory down
in the smoking room, came and looked at me over the high intervening
rope, much as a horse looks over a wall, and proceeded to hold
forth:
"D'you remember that picture, 'The Vigil,' Rupert, where a knight
is kneeling with his sword before the altar, being consecrated for
the work he has in hand? Well, this voyage is the vigil for these
fellows. Before they step ashore, they shall kneel in front of the
same altar, and seek a blessing on their swords. Hang it! aren't
they young knights setting out on perilous work? And I'll prove we
have a Church still, and an Altar, and a Vigil."
Then he asked me what I was stopping for and talking about, and why
I didn't get on with the game. His spirits were irrepressible.
§2
After tea, on the fourth day, everyone hurried to the boat-deck, for
land was on our port side. There to our left, looking like a long,
riftless cloud bank, lay a pale-washed impression of the coast of
Spain. A little town, of which every building seemed a dead white,
could be distinguished on the slope of a lofty hill. There was a
long undulation of mountainous country, and a promontory that we
were told was Cape Trafalgar.
I should have kept my eyes fixed on this, my first view of Sunny
Spain, if there had not been excited talk of another land looming on
the starboard side. Looking quickly that way, I made out the grey
wraith of a continent, and realised that, for the first time, Dark
Africa had crept, with becomingly mysterious silence, into my range
of vision.
Doe let his field-glasses drop, and stared dreamily at the beautiful
picture, which was being given us, as we approached in the fall of a
summer day towards the famous Straits of Gibraltar. Not long,
however, could his reverie last, for Jimmy Doon poked him in the
ribs and said:
"Wake up. Do you grasp the fact that you are just about to go
through the gate of the Mediterranean, and you'll be damned lucky if
you ever come out through it again? It's like going through the
entrance of the Colosseum to the lions. It's both tedious and
unseemly."
"Oh, get away, Jimmy," retorted Doe, "you spoil the view. Look,
Rupert--don't look out of the bows all the time; turn round and look
astern, if you want to see a glorious sunset."
I turned. We were steering due east, so the disc of the sun, this
still evening, was going down behind our stern. The sea maintained a
hue of sparkling indigo, while the sun encircled itself with
widening haloes of gold and orange. The vision was so gorgeous that
I turned again to see its happy effect upon the coast of Spain, and
found that the long strip of land had become apple pink. Meanwhile I
was aware that my hands and all my exposed flesh had a covering of
sticky moisture, the outcome of a damp wind blowing from grey and
melancholy Africa.
"The sirocco," said someone, and foretold a heavy mist with the
night.
It happened so. The darkness had scarcely succeeded the highly
coloured sunset before the raucous booming of the fog-horn sounded
from the ship's funnel, and the whole vessel was surrounded with a
thick mist--African breath again--which, laden with damp, left
everything superficially wet. The mist continued, and the darkness
deepened, as we went through the Straits. The siren boomed
intermittently, and Gibraltar, invisible, flashed Morse messages in
long and short shafts of light on the thick, moist atmosphere. To
add to the eerie effect of it all, a ship's light was hung upon the
mast, and cast yellow rays over the fog-damp.
"Beastly shame," grumbled Doe, looking into the opaque darkness, "we
shan't see the Rock this trip through. Never mind, we'll see it on
the homeward route."
"_Per_-haps," corrected Jimmy Doon.
Thus we went through the gate into the Mediterranean theatre, where
the big battle for those other Straits was being fought. We left the
fog behind us, as we got into wider seas, and steamed into a hot
Mediterranean night.
§3
Oh, it was torrid. Ere we came on deck for our talk with Monty under
the stars, we had changed into our coolest things. And now, awaiting
his arrival, I lolled in my deck-chair, clothed in my Cambridge blue
sleeping-suit, and Doe lay with his pink stripes peeping from
beneath the grey embroidered kimono.
It had become a regular practice, our nightly talk with Monty on
what he called "Big Things." Certainly he did most of the talking.
But his ideas were so new and illuminating, and he opened up such
undreamed-of vistas of thought, that we were pleased to lie lazily
and listen.
"What's it to be to-night?" he began, as he walked up to us; but he
suddenly saw our pyjama outfit, and was very rude about it, calling
us "popinjays," and "degenerate æsthetes." "My poor boys," he summed
up, as he dropped into the chair, which we had thoughtfully placed
between us for his judgment throne, "you can't help it, but you're a
public nuisance and an offence against society. What's it to be
to-night?"
"Tell us about confession," I said, and curled myself up to listen.
"Right," agreed Monty.
"But wait," warned Doe. "You're not going to get me to come to
confession. I value your good opinion too highly."
"My dear Gazelle, don't be absurd. I'll have your promise to-night."
"You won't!"
"I will! Here goes."
And Monty opened with a preliminary bombardment in which, in his
shattering style, he fired at us every argument that ever has been
adduced for private confession--"the Sacrament of Penance," as he
startled us by calling it. The Bible was poured out upon us. The
doctrine and practice of the Church came hurtling after. Then
suddenly he threw away theological weapons, and launched a
specialised attack on each of us in turn, obviously suiting his
words to his reading of our separate characters. He turned on me,
and said:
"You see, Rupert. Confession is simply the consecration of your own
natural instinct--the instinct to unburden yourself to one who waits
with love and a gift of forgiveness--the instinct to have someone in
the world who knows exactly all that you are. You realise that you
are utterly lonely, as long as you are acting a part before all the
world. But your loneliness goes when you know of at least one to
whom you stand revealed."
As he said it, my whole soul seemed to answer "Yes."
"It's so," he continued. "Christianity from beginning to end is the
consecration of human instincts."
So warmed up was he to his subject that he brought out his next
arguments like an exultant player leading honour after honour from a
hand of trumps. He slapped me triumphantly on the knee, and brought
out his ace:
"The Christ-idea is the consecration of the instinct to have a
visible, tangible hero for a god."
Again he slapped me on the knee, and said:
"The Mass is the consecration of the instinct to have a place and a
time and an Objective Presence, where one can touch the hem of His
garment and worship."
That was his king. He emphasised his final argument on my knee more
triumphantly than ever.
"And confession is the consecration of the instinct to unburden your
soul; to know that you are not alone in your knowledge of yourself;
to know that at a given moment, by a definite sacrament, your sins
are blotted away, as though they had never been."
His victorious contention, by its very impulse, carried its colours
into my heart. I yielded to his conviction that Catholic
Christianity held all the honours. But I fancy I had wanted to
capitulate, before ever the attack began.
"By Jove," I said. "I never saw things like that before."
"Of course you didn't," he snapped.
Having broken through my front, he was re-marshalling his arguments
into a new formation, ready to bear down upon Doe, when that
spirited youth, who alone did any counter-attacking, assumed the
initiative, and assaulted Monty with the words:
"It's no good. If I made my confession to a priest who'd been my
friend, I'd never want to see him again for shame. I'd run round the
corner, if he appeared in the street."
"On the contrary," said Monty, "you'd run to meet him. You'd know
that you were dearer to him than you could possibly have been, if
you had never gone to him in confession. You'd know that your
relations after the sacred moment of confession were more intimate
than ever before."
I saw Doe's defence crumbling beneath this attack. I knew he would
instantly want these intimate relations to exist between Monty and
himself. Monty, subtly enough, had borne down on that part of Doe's
make-up which was most certain to give way--his yielding
affectionateness.
And, while Doe remained silent and thoughtful, Monty attacked with a
new weight of argument at a fresh point--Doe's love of the heroic.
"Don't you think," he asked, "that, if you've gone the whole way
with your sins, it's up to a sportsman to go the whole way with his
confession. And anybody knows that it's much more difficult to
confess to God through a priest than in the privacy of one's own
room. It's difficult, but it's the grand thing; and so it appeals to
an heroic nature more."
"Yes, I see that," assented Doe.
Monty said nothing further for awhile, as if hoping we would declare
our decision without any prompting from him. But we were shy and
silent; and at last he asked:
"Well, what's the decision?"
"I'll come to you," I said, "if you'll show me how to do it all."
He replied nothing. I believe he was too happy to speak. Then he
turned to Doe.
"Gazelle, what about you?"
And Doe said one of those engaging things that only he could utter:
"I imagine I ought to do it for love of Our Lord. But s'posing I
know that isn't the real motive--s'posing I feel that someone has
been sent into my life to put it right, and I do it rather for--for
him?"
There Monty was beaten. Doe's meaning was too plain; and the rich
prize it threw at Monty's feet too overwhelming. The only answer he
could give was: "You must try and link it to love for the Higher
One."
"All right," said Doe, simply. "I'll try."
A silence of unusual length followed. The noise of the ship going
through the water, and the beat of the engines, assumed the monopoly
of sound. Doe and I were thinking of the thorny and troublesome path
of confession, which in a few days we must traverse. And Monty
indicated what his thoughts were by the remark with which he
prepared to close that night's conversation under the stars.
"The two cardinal dogmas of my faith are--"
"The Mass and confession," I volunteered, in a flash of impudence.
"Don't interrupt, you rude little cub. They are these. Just as there
is more beauty in nature than ugliness, so there is more goodness in
humanity than evil, and more happiness in the world than sorrow....
"Now and then one is allowed a joy that would outweigh years of
disappointment. You two pups have given me one of those joys
to-night. It's my task to make this voyage your Vigil; and a perfect
Vigil. It's all inexpressibly dear to me. I'm going to send you down
the gangway when you go ashore to this crusade--properly absolved by
your Church. I'm going to send you into the fight--_white_."