PENANCE
§1
Upon the rail leaned Doe and I watching the waves break away from
the ship. It was morning, and we were troubled--troubled over the
awful difficulty of making our life confession on the morrow. Monty
had given much pains to preparing us. He had sat with each under the
awning on sunny days, and told him how to do it. We were to divide
our lives into periods: our childhood, our schooldays, and our life
in the army. We were to search each period carefully, and note down
on a single sheet of writing-paper the sins that we must confess.
But, wanting to do it thoroughly, I had already reached my ninth
sheet. And I was still only at the beginning of my schooldays. I had
acknowledged this to Monty, who smiled kindly, and said: "It is a
_Via Dolorosa_, isn't it? But carry on. For the joy that is set
before you, endure the cross."
"It was easy enough," complained Doe, "to say frankly 'everything'
when he asked us what we had to confess; but, when you've got to go
into details, it's the limit. I wish I were dead. Monty gave me a
long list of questions for self-examination, and I had to go back
and ask him for more. They didn't nearly cover all _I_'d done."
I couldn't help smiling.
"Yes," proceeded Doe, "Monty laughed too, and said: 'Don't get
rattled. You're one of the best, and proving it every moment.' And
that brings me to my other difficulty. Rupert, all my life I've done
things for my own glory; and I did want to make this confession a
perfect thing, free from wrong motives like that. But you've no idea
how self-glorification has eaten into me. I find myself hoping Monty
will say mine is the best life confession he has ever heard. Isn't
it awful?" He sighed and murmured: "I wonder if I shall ever do an
_absolutely perfect_ thing."
Such a character as Doe's must ever love to unrobe itself before a
friend; and he continued:
"No, I know my motives are mixed with wrong. For example, I don't
believe I should do this, if some other chaplain, instead of Monty,
had asked me to do it. And your saying you'd do it had much too much
to do with my consenting. But I _am_ trying to do it properly. And,
after turning my life inside out, I've come to the conclusion that
I'm a bundle of sentiment and self-glorification. The only good
thing that I can see in myself is that where I love I give myself
utterly. It's awful."
So, you see, in these words did Doe admit that the dog-like
devotion, which he had once given to Radley, was transferred to
Monty. In my own less intense way I felt the same thing. Radley had
become remote, and ceased to be a force in our lives; Monty reigned
in his stead. We were boys; and what's the use of pretending? A
boy's affection is not eternal.
Of Doe's confession I can relate no more. It withdraws itself into a
privacy. I can but tell you the tale of my own experience.
§2
Monty's cabin was to be his confessional. I was to go to him early
the next morning, as I had been detailed for Submarine Watch for the
remainder of the day.
I approached his door, stimulating myself for the ordeal by saying
"In half an hour I shall have told all, and the thing will be done."
A certain happiness fought in my mind against my shrinking from
self-humiliation. Two moods wrestled in me; the one said: "The
long-dreaded moment is on you"; the other said: "The eagerly awaited
moment has come."
I found Monty ready for me, robed in a surplice and violet stole. In
front of the place where I was to kneel was a crucifix.
"Kneel there," said Monty, "and, if necessary, look at that. _He_
was so much a man like us that He kept the glory that was set before
Him as a motive for enduring the cross."
I knelt down. Nervousness suddenly possessed me, and my voice
trembled, as I read the printed words:
"Father, give me thy blessing, for I have sinned."
Then nervousness left me. The scene became very calm. It seemed to
be taking place somewhere out of the world. The worldly relations of
the two taking part in it changed as in a transfiguration. I ceased
to think of Monty as a lively friend. He had become a stately
priest, and I a penitent. He had become a father, and I a child.
With a quiet deliberateness that surprised me, I said the
"Confiteor," and accused myself of the long catalogue of sins that I
had prepared. It was almost mechanical. Such merit as there may have
been in my exhaustive confession must have lain in what conquering
of obstacles I achieved before I came to my knees in Monty's
presence, because I was conscious of no meritorious effort then. It
was as if I had battled against a running current, and had at last
got into the stream; for now, as I spoke in the confessional, I was
just floating without exertion down the current.
When I had finished, Monty sat without saying a word. I kept my face
in my hands, and waited for the counsel that he would offer.
He gave me the very thing that my opening manhood was craving; one
clear and lofty ideal. I had felt blindly for it that far-off time
when, as a small boy, the recollection of my grandfather's words:
"That Rupert, the best of the lot," had lifted me out of cheating
and lies. I had aspired towards it, but had not seen it, that
evening outside Kensingtowe's baths. I had seen it hazily that day
the old Colonel spoke of our Youth and our High Calling.
And now Monty set the vision in front of me. I was to see three
ideals, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, and merge them all in one
vision--Beauty. For Goodness was only beauty in morals, and Truth
was only beauty in knowledge. And I was to overcome my sins, not by
negatively fighting against them when they were hard upon me, but by
positively pursuing in the long days free from temptation my goal of
Beauty. Then the things which I had confessed would gradually drop
out of my life, as things which did not fit in with my ideal. For
they were not good, nor true, nor beautiful.
"Pursue Beauty," he said, "like the Holy Grail."
With my head still bowed in my hands, I felt that happiness which
comes upon men when they grasp a great idea. I felt lofty resolution
and serene confidence flowing into me like wine.
"And, finally," said this masterly priest, "know how certain you can
be that the absolution which I am going to pronounce is full and
final. God only asks a true penitence, and you can offer Him no
fairer fruits of penitence than those you have brought this morning.
Know, then, that there will be no whiter soul in all God's church
than yours, when you leave this room. For you will be as white as
when you left the baptismal font. Now listen. You shall hear what
was worked for you on Calvary."
I listened, and heard him speak with studied solemnity the words of
absolution. And if a feeling can be said to grow up and get older,
then there came upon me at that moment the feeling of a child
released to play in the sunlight; only it was that feeling grown to
a man's estate.
I rose from my knees to find that I was standing again in the world.
I saw a ship's cabin, and a man removing a violet stole from a white
surplice. It didn't seem a time in which to talk, so I turned the
handle of the cabin door, and went out quietly.
I went straight to my Submarine Watch on the deck. There was a glow
pervading me, as of something pleasant which had just occurred.
Forgive me if it be weak to have these fleeting moments of
exaltation, but I was seeing goodness, truth, and beauty in
everything. The bright sunlight was beauty; of course it was; the
blue sea was beauty. And it all had something to do with beauty of
character and beauty of life.
Imagine me this rare day, lost in my thoughts, as I watched the sea
running by, or the new world coming to meet the bows. Sometimes I
watched it with my naked eyes. Sometimes I hastened the approach of
the new things by bringing my field glasses to bear upon them. And,
all the time, I had a sense of satisfaction, as of something
pleasant which had just occurred.
At first the broad blue floor of the sea stretched right away on
every side without a sail anywhere to suggest that it was a medium
of traffic. The sky, a far paler blue, met the horizon all round. It
was only a slight restlessness over the surface that made the
Mediterranean distinguishable from a vast and still inland lake.
The ship plied steadily onward in the opposite direction to the sun,
which looked down upon the scene with its hot glance unmodified by
cloud or haze.
With my glasses I swept the empty waters. At last I saw, sketched
over there with palest touch, a line of mountains--just such a range
as a child would draw, one peak having a narrow point, another a
rounded summit. This land lay at so great a distance that it was
shadowless, and looked like a long bit of broken slate with its
jagged ends uppermost. I cast in my mind whether Gallipoli loomed
like this: and Gallipoli, somehow, seemed more peaceful since that
satisfying event of the morning.
I dropped my glasses. For the first time I realised that I was
setting out to do something difficult for England. Actually I! I
glowed in the thought, for to-day, if ever, I was in an heroic mood.
I touched for a moment the perfect patriotism. Yes, if Beauty
demanded it, I could give all for England--all.
As the day went by, we seemed to be rounding that mountainous
island, for it lingered on our port, always changing its aspect, but
always remaining beautiful.
The whole scene was Beauty. And this Beauty, urged the voice of the
priest, was to have something to say in moments when I must choose
between this bad deed and that good one. Of the two, I was to do the
one that was the more like the Mediterranean on a summer day.
Oh, I had a clear enough ideal now. And why had I never seen before,
as Monty had seen, that, just as there was far more beauty in seas
and hills than ugliness, so on the whole there was more goodness in
human characters than evil, and, assuredly, more happiness in life
than pain. And the old Colonel, too, had seen beauty in youth and
strength; he had seen it triumphing in Penny's death and in all this
sanguinary Dardanelles campaign.
Yes, I had closed on the idea. Even the lively excesses of Major
Hardy's mob, even Jimmy Doon's cynical humour at the prospect of
death had much in them like the Mediterranean on a summer day.
Or, say, on a summer night like this. For, as the evening wore on,
we were still passing this long island; and a pale mist had risen in
a narrow ribbon from the sea-line, and hidden a lower belt of its
hills from my view, so that the peaks towered like Mount Ararats
above a rising flood of fog-damp; and, as this bank of mist rose
upward, the sun sank downward, a disc of gold fire.
I followed it with my glasses; and so rapid was its descent that,
before I could count a hundred, it had dipped beneath the
water-line--become a flaming semicircle--then only a glowing
rim--and disappeared. It left a few minutes' afterglow, with the sky
every shade from crimson at the horizon to blue at the zenith.
The world got darker, and the waves, breaking from the ship's bows,
began to spill a luminous phosphorescence on the sea. I watched a
little longer; and then the stars and the phosphorescent wave-crests
glistened in a Mediterranean night.