Two months had passed, and February was about to give place to
March--two months empty of outward event for Dominic Iglesias, but big
with thought and consolidation of purpose. He had been more than ever
solitary during this period, for his acquaintance, even to the faithful
George Lovegrove, stood aloof. But Dominic hardly noticed this. Though
solitary, he had not been lonely, since his mind was absorbed in
question, in pursuit, in the consciousness of deepening conviction. For
the recognition not merely of religion, but of Christianity, as a
supreme factor in earthly existence, which had come to him in the
dreary December twilight, as, broken in health and in spirit, he gazed
upon the carven picture of Calvary, had proved no fugitive experience.
It remained by him, entracing his imagination and satisfying both his
heart and his intelligence; so that he looked back upon the hour of his
despair thankfully, seeing in it the starting-point of a journey the
prosecution of which promised not only to be the main occupation of his
remaining years here in time, but, the river of death once crossed, to
stretch onward and onward through realms, at present inconceivable, of
beauty, of knowledge, and of love. And so, for the moment, solitude was
sweet to him, leaving him free of petty cares and anxieties--he moving
forward, ignorant of the gossip which in point of fact surrounded him,
innocent of the feminine plots and counterplots of which his blameless
bachelorhood was at once the provoking cause and the object; while in
his eyes--though of this, too, he was ignorant--dwelt increasingly
reflection of that mysterious and lovely light which, let obstinately
purblind man deny it as he may, lies forever along the far horizon, for
comfort of godly wayfarers and as beacon of the elect.
Yet it must not be supposed that the outset of Iglesias' spiritual
journey was wholly serene, free from obstacle or hesitation, from risk
of untoward selection, or rejection, of the safe way. Many roads, and
those bristling with contradictory signposts, presented themselves.
Noisy touts, each crying up his own special mode and means of
conveyance, rushed forth at every turn.
Modern Protestantism, as he encountered it in the pages of popular
newspapers and magazines, at Mrs. Porcher's dinner-table, or in the
good Lovegroves' drawing-room, had small attraction for him, since it
appeared to advance chiefly by negations stated with rather blatant
self-sufficiency and self-conceit. It might tend to the making of
respectable municipal councillors; but, in his opinion, it was idle to
pretend that it tended to the making of saints--and for the saints,
those experts in the divine science, Iglesias confessed a weakness. Of
spirituality it showed, to his seeing, as little outward evidence as of
philosophy or of art. The phrases of piety might still be upon the lips
of its votaries; but the attitude and aspirations engendered by piety
were unfortunately dead. Its system of ethics was frankly utilitarian.
Its goal, though hidden from the simple by a maze of high-sounding
sentiment, was Rationalism pure and simple. Its god was not the creator
of the visible universe, of angels and archangels, dominions,
principalities, and powers, of incalculable natural and supernatural
forces, but a jerky loose-jointed pasteboard divinity, the exclusive
possession, since it is the exclusive invention, of the Anglo-Saxon
race, through whose gaping mouth any and every self-elected prophet was
free to shout, as heaven-descended truth, in the name of progress and
liberty, whatever political or social catchword chanced to be the
fashion of the hour.
Nor did the neo-mystics, whose utterances are also sown broadcast in
contemporary literature and who are so lavish with their offers of
divine enlightenment, please Iglesias any better. For his mind, thanks
to his Latin ancestry, was of the logical order, while a business
training and long knowledge of affairs had taught him the value of
method, giving him an unalterable reverence for fact, and impressing
upon him the existence of law, absolute and immutable, in every
department of nature and of human activity--law, to break which is to
destroy the sequence of cause and effect, and so procure abortion.
Therefore this new school of thinkers--if one can dignify by the name
of thinkers persons of so vague and topsy-turvy a mental
habit--nourishing themselves upon the windy meat of secular and
time-exploded fallacies, upon the temple-sweepings of all the
religions, oriental and occidental, old and new, combined with
ill-attested marvels of modern physical and psychological experiment,
were far from commending themselves to his calm and patient judgment.
Such excited persons, as a slight acquaintance with history proves
beyond all question, have existed in every age; and, suffering from
chronic mental dyspepsia, have ever been liable to mistake the
rumblings of internal flatulence for the Witness of the Spirit. In
their current pronouncements Iglesias met with a wearisome passion for
paradox, and an equally wearisome disposition to hail all eccentricity
as genius, all hysteria as inspiration. While in their exaltation of
the "sub-conscious self"--namely, of those blind movements of instinct
and foreboding common to the lower animals and to savage or degenerate
man alike--as against the intellect and the reasoned action of the
will, he saw a menace to human attainment, to civilisation--in the best
meaning of that word--to right reason and noble living, which it would
be difficult to overestimate. These good people, while pouring contempt
on the body, and even denying its existence, in point of fact thought
and talked about little else. All of which struck him as not only very
tiresome and very silly, but very dangerous. Modern Protestantism might
eventuate in Rationalism, in a limiting of human endeavour exclusively
to the end of material well-being. But this worship of the
pseudo-sciences, this tinkering at the accepted foundations and
accepted decencies of the social order, this cultivation of
intellectual and moral chaos, could, for the vast majority of its
professors at all events, eventuate only in the mad-house. And to the
mad-house, whether by twentieth-century esoteric airship or occult
subway, Dominic Iglesias had not the very smallest desire to go.
For he had no ambition to be "on time" and up-to-date, to electrify
either himself or his contemporaries by an exhibition of mental
smartness. He merely desired, earnestly yet humbly, to be given grace
to find the road--however archaic in the eyes of the modern world that
road might be--which leads to the light on the far horizon and beyond
to the presence of God. The more he meditated on these things the more
inconceivable it became to him but that this road veritably existed;
and that, not by labour of man, but by everlasting ordinance of God. It
was absurd, in face of a state of being so complex, so highly
organised, so universally subjected to law, as the one in which he
found himself, that a matter of such supreme importance as the channel
of intercourse between the soul and its Maker should have been left to
haphazard accident or blundering of lucky chance. And so, having
supplemented his researches in print, by listening to the discourses of
many teachers, from one end of London to the other in lecture-hall,
chapel, and church, having even stood among the crowds which gather
around itinerant preachers in the Park, Dominic found his thought
fixing itself with deepening assurance upon the communion in which he
had been born and baptised, which his father, in the interests of the
revolutionary propaganda, had so bitterly repudiated, and from which
his mother, broken by the tyranny of circumstance and bodily weakness,
had lapsed.
Outside that communion he beheld only weltering seas of prejudice and
conflicting opinion, heard only the tumult of confused and acrimonious
contest. Within he beheld the calm of fearlessly wielded authority and
of loyal obedience; heard the awed silence of those who worship being
glad. For the Catholic Church, as Iglesias began to understand, is
something far greater than any triumphant example of that which can be
attained by cooperation and organisation. It is not an organisation,
but an organism; a Living Being, perfectly proportioned, with inherent
powers of development and growth; ever-existent in the Divine Mind
before Time was; recipient and guardian of the deepest secrets, the
most sacred mysteries of existence; endlessly adaptable to changing
conditions yet immutably the same. Hence it is that Catholicism
presents no questionable historic pedigree and speaks with no uncertain
voice. Claiming not only to know the road the soul must tread would it
reach the far horizon, but to be the appointed warden of that same road
and sustainer of it, she points with proud confidence to the vast
multitude which, under her guidance, has joyfully trodden it--a
multitude as diverse in gifts and estate, as in age and race--as proof
of the authenticity of her mission to the toiling and sorrowful
children of men.
Yet, since unconditional surrender must ever strike a pretty shrewd
blow at the roots both of personal pride and worldly caution, Dominic
Iglesias hesitated to take the final step and declare himself. To one
who has long lived outside the creeds, and that not ungodly, still less
bestially, it is no light matter to subject attitude of mind and daily
habit to distinct rule. Not only does the natural man rebel against the
apparent limiting of his personal freedom, but the conventional and
sophisticated man fears lest agreement should, after all, spell
weakness, while indifferentism--specially in outward
observances--argues strength. A certain shyness, moreover, withheld
Iglesias, a not unadmirable dread of being guilty of ostentation. It
was so little his custom to obtrude himself, his opinions, and his
needs upon the attention of others, that he was scrupulous and
diffident in the selection of time and place. The affair, however,
decided itself, as affairs usually do when the intention of those
undertaking them is a sincere one--and thus.
The tide of war had begun to turn. Earlier in the week had come the
news of General Cronje's surrender, after the three days' shelling of
his laager at Paardeberg. Hence satisfaction, not only of victory but
of compassion, since a sense of horror had weighed on the hearts of
even the least sentimental at thought of the stubborn thousands, penned
in that flaming rat-trap of the dry river-bed, ringed about by
sun-baked rock and sand and death-belching guns. To-day came news of
the relief of long-beleaguered Ladysmith, and London was shaken by
emotion, under the bleak moisture-laden March sky, the air thick with
the clash of joy-bells, buildings gay with riotous outbreak of
many-coloured flags, the streets vibrant with the tread and voices of
surging crowds.
Iglesias, who early that afternoon had walked Citywards to see the
holiday aspect of the town and glean the latest war news, growing
somewhat weary on his homeward journey of the humours of his
fellow-citizens--which became beery and boisterous as the day drew
on--turned in at the open gates of the Oratory, in passing along the
Brompton Road. His purpose was to gain a little breathing space from
the jostling throng, by standing at the head of the steps under the
wide portico of the great church. Looking westward, above the wedge of
mean and ill-assorted houses that marks the junction of the Fulham and
the Cromwell Roads--the muddy pavements of which, far as the eye
carried, were black with people--the yellowish glare of a pallid sunset
spread itself across the leaden dulness of the sky. The wan and sickly
light touched the architrave and columns of the facade of the great
church, bringing this and the statue of the Blessed Virgin which
surmounts it into a strange and phantasmal relief--a building not
material and of this world, but rather of a city of dreams. To Iglesias
it appeared as though there was an element of menace in that cold and
melancholy reflection of the sunset. It produced in him a sense of
insecurity and distrust, which the roar of the traffic and horseplay of
the crowd were powerless to counteract. London, the monstrous mother,
in this hour of her rejoicing showed singularly unattractive. Her
features were grimed with soot, her dull-hued garments foul with slush,
her gestures were common, her laughter coarse. His soul revolted from
the sight and sound of her; revolted against the fate which had bound
him so closely to her in the past, and which bound him still. The
spirit of her infected even the sky above her, painting it with the sad
colours of perplexity and doubt. He stepped farther back under the
portico, moved by desire to escape from the too insistent thought and
spectacle of her. Doing so, he became aware of music reaching him
faintly from behind the closed doors of the church, fine yet sonorous
harmonies supporting the radiant clarity of a boy's voice.
Then Iglesias understood that he was presented here and immediately
with the moment of final choice. Delay was dishonourable, since it was
nothing less than a shirking of the obligations which his convictions
had created. So there, on the one hand--for so the whole matter
pictured itself to his seeing--was London, the type, as she is in fact
the capital, of the modern world--of its ambitions, material and
social, of its activities, of its amazing association of pleasure and
misery, of the rankest poverty and most plethoric wealth--at once
formless, sprawling, ugly, vicious, while magnificent in intelligence,
in vitality, in display, as in actual area and bulk. On the other hand,
and in the eyes of the majority phantasmal as a city of dreams, was
Holy Church, austere, restrictive, demanding much yet promising little
save clean hands and a pure heart, until the long and difficult road is
traversed which--as she declares--leads to the light on the far horizon
and beyond to the presence of God.
"If one could be certain of that last, then all would be simple and
easy," Iglesias said to himself, looking out over the turbulence of the
streets to the pallid menace of the western sky. "But it is in the
nature of things, that one cannot be certain. Certainty, whether for
good or evil, can only come after the event. One must take the risk.
And the risk is great, almost appallingly great."
For just then there awoke and cried in him all the repressed and
frustrated pride of a man's life--lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes,
overweening ambition of power and place, of cruelty even, of gross
licence and debauch. For the moment he ceased to be an individual,
limited by time and circumstances, and became, in desire, the possessor
of the passions and reckless curiosity of the whole human race. So
that, in imagination he suffered unexampled temptations; and, in
resisting them, flung aside unexampled allurements of grandeur and
conceivable delight. Not what actually was, or ever had been, possible
to and for him, Dominic Iglesias, bank-clerk, assailed him with
provocative vision and voice; but the whole pageant of earthly being,
and the inebriation of it. Nothing less than this did he behold, and
drink of, and, in spirit, repudiate and put away forever, as at last he
pulled open the heavy swing doors and passed into the church.
Within all was dim, mist and incense smoke obscuring the roof of the
great dome, the figures of the kneeling congregation far below showing
small and dark. Only the high altar was ablaze with many lights, in the
centre of which, high-uplifted, encircled by the golden rays of the
monstrance, pale, mysterious, pearl of incalculable price, showed the
immaculate Host.
Quietly yet fearlessly, as one who comes by long-established right,
Dominic walked the length of the nave, knelt devoutly on both knees,
prostrating himself as, long ago, in the days of early childhood his
mother had taught him to do at the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.
Now, after all these years--and a sob rose in his throat--he seemed to
feel her hand upon his shoulder, the gentle pressure of which enjoined
deepest reverence. Then rising, he took his place in the second row of
seats on the gospel side, and remained there, through the concluding
acts of the ceremonial, until the silent congregation suddenly finds
voice--penetrated by austere emotion--in recitation of the Divine
Praises.
Some minutes later he knelt in the confessional, laying bare the
secrets of his heart.
Thus did Dominic Iglesias cast off the bondage of that monstrous
mother, London-town, cast off the terror of those unbidden companions,
Loneliness and Old Age, using and, taking the risks, humbly reconcile
himself to Holy Church.