T HE Lower Fifth only knew Michael during the Autumn term.
After Christmas he moved up to the Middle Fifth, and, leaving
behind him many friends, including Alan, he found himself in an
industrious society concentrated upon obtaining the Oxford and
Cambridge Higher Certificate for proficiency in Greek, Latin,
Mathematics and either Divinity, French or History. Removed
from the temptations of a merry company, Michael worked very
hard indeed and kept his brain fit by argument instead of
football. The prevailing attitude of himself and his
contemporaries towards the present was one of profound
pessimism. The scholarship of St. James’ was deteriorating;
there was a dearth of great English poets; novelists were not
so good as once they were in the days of Dickens; the new boys
were obviously inferior to their prototypes in the past; the
weather was growing worse year by year; the country was
plunging into an abyss. In school Michael prophesied more
loudly than any of his fellow Jeremiahs, and less and less did
it seem worth while in these Certificate-stifled days to seek
for romance or poetry or heroism or adventure. Yet as soon as
the precincts of discipline and study were left behind, Michael
could extract from life full draughts of all these virtues.
Without neglecting the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate
he devoured voraciously every scrap of information about
Catholicism which it was possible to acquire. Books were bought
in tawdry repositories—Catholic
Belief, The Credentials of the Catholic Church, The Garden of
the Soul, The Glories of Mary by S. Alphonso Liguori, Alban
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, The Clifton Tracts, and on his
own side of the eternal controversy, Lee’s Validity of English
Orders, The Alcuin Club Transactions with many other volumes.
Most of all he liked to pore upon the Tourist’s Church Guide,
which showed with asterisks and paragraph marks and sections
and daggers what churches throughout the United Kingdom
possessed the five points of Incense, Lights, Vestments, Mixed
Chalice and Eastward Position. He found it absorbing to
compare the progress of ritual through the years.
Michael, as once he had known the ranks of the British Army
from Lance-corporal to Field Marshal, could tell the hierarchy
from Sexton to Pope. He knew too, as once he knew the history
and uniform of Dragoons, Hussars and Lancers, the history and
uniform of the religious orders—Benedictines, Cistercians,
Franciscans, Dominicans (how he loved the last in their black
and white habit, _Domini canes_ , watchdogs of the Lord),
Carmelites, Præmonstratensians, Augustinians, Servites,
Gilbertines, Carthusians, Redemptorists, Capuchins,
Passionists, Jesuits, Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo and the
Congregation of St. Philip Neri. Michael outvied Mr. Prout in
ecclesiastical possessions, and his bedroom was nearly as full
as the repository from which it was stocked. There were images
of St. Michael (his own patron), St. Hugh of Lincoln (patron of
schoolboys) and St. James of Compostella (patron of the
school), together with Our Lady of Seven Dolours, Our Lady Star
of the Sea and Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Perpetual
Succour, Our Lady of Victories; there were eikons, scapulars,
crucifixes, candlesticks, the Holy Child of Prague, rosaries,
and indeed every variety of sacred bric-à-brac. Michael slept
in an oriental atmosphere, because he had formed the habit of
burning during his prayers cone-
shaped pastilles in a saucer. The tenuous spiral of perfumed
smoke carried up his emotional apostrophes through the prosaic
ceiling of the old night-nursery past the stars, beyond the
Thrones and Dominations and Seraphim to God. Michael’s contest
with the sins of youth had become much more thrilling since he
had accepted the existence of a personal fiend, and in an
ecstasy of temptation he would lie in bed and defy the Devil,
calling upon his patron the Archangel to descend from heaven
and battle with the powers of evil in that airy arena above the
coal-wharf beyond the railway lines. But the Father of Lies had
many tricks with which to circumvent Michael; he would conjure
up sensuous images before his antagonist; succubi materialized
as pretty housemaids, feminine devils put on tights and
openwork stockings to encounter him from the pages of pink
weekly papers, and sometimes Satan himself would sit at the
foot of his bed in the darkness and tell him tales of how other
boys enjoyed themselves, arguing that it was a pity to waste
his opportunities and filling his thoughts with dissolute
memories. Michael would leap from his bed and pray before his
crucifix, and through the darkness angels and saints would
rally to his aid, until Satan slunk off with his tail between
his legs, personally humiliated.
At school the fever of the examination made Michael desperate
with the best intentions. He almost learned the translations of
Thucydides and Sophocles, of Horace and Cicero. He knew by
heart a meanly written Roman History, and no passage in
Corneille could hold an invincible word. Cricket was never
played that summer by the Middle Fifth; it was more useful to
wander in corners of the field, murmuring continually the
tables of the Kings of Judah from Maclear’s sad-hued abstract
of Holy Scripture. In the end Michael passed in Greek and
Latin, in French and Divinity and Roman History, even in
Algebra and
Euclid, but the arithmetical problems of a Stockbroker, a
Paper-hanger and a Housewife made all the rest of his
knowledge of no account, and Michael failed to see beside his
name in the school list that printed bubble which would refer
him to the tribe of those who had satisfied the examiners for
the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate. This failure
depressed Michael, not because he felt implicated in any
disgrace, but because he wished very earnestly that he had not
wasted so many hours of fine weather in work. He made up his
mind that the mistake should never be repeated, and for the
rest of his time at St. James’ he resisted all set books. If
Demosthenes was held necessary, Michael would read Plato, and
when Cicero was set, Michael would feel bound to read Livy.
Michael looked back on the year with dissatisfaction, and wondered if
school was going to become more and more boring each new term for nine
more terms. The prospect was unendurably grey, and Michael felt that
life was not worth living. He talked over with Mr. Viner the flatness
of existence on the evening after the result of the examination was
known.
“I swotted like anything,” said Michael gloomily. “And what’s the good?
I’m sick of everything.”
The priest’s eyes twinkled, as he plunged deeper into his wicker
arm-chair and puffed clouds of smoke towards the comfortable shelves of
books.
“You want a holiday,” he remarked.
“A holiday?” echoed Michael fretfully. “What’s the good of a holiday
with my mater at some beastly seaside place?”
“Oh, come,” said the priest, smiling. “You’ll be able to probe the
orthodoxy of the neighbouring clergy.”
“Oh, no really, it’s nothing to laugh at, Mr. Viner. You’ve no
idea how beastly it is to dawdle about in a crowd
of people, and then at the end go back to another term of
school. I’m sick of everything. Will you lend me Lee’s
Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms?” added Michael in a voice
that contained no accent of hope.
“I’ll lend you anything you like, my dear boy,” said the priest, “on
one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, that you’ll admit life holds a few grains of consolation.”
“But it doesn’t,” Michael declared.
“Wait a bit, I haven’t finished. I was going to say—when I tell you
that we are going to keep the Assumption this August.”
Michael’s eyes glittered for a moment with triumph.
“By Jove, how decent.” Then they grew dull again. “And I shan’t be
here. The rotten thing is, too, that my mater wants to go abroad. Only
she says she couldn’t leave me alone. But of course she could really.”
“Why not stay with a friend—the voluble Chator, for instance, or
Martindale, that Solomon of schoolboys, or Rigg who in Medicean days
would have been already a cardinal, so admirably does he incline to all
parties?”
“I can’t ask myself,” said Michael. “Their people would think it rum.
Besides, Chator’s governor has gout, and I wouldn’t care to be six
weeks with the other two. Oh, I do hate not being grown up.”
“What about your friend Alan Merivale? I thought him a very charming
youth and refreshingly unpietistic.”
“He doesn’t know the difference between a chasuble and a black gown,”
said Michael.
“Which seems to me not to matter very much ultimately,” put in Mr.
Viner.
“No, of course it doesn’t. But if one is keen on something and
somebody else isn’t, it isn’t much fun,” Michael explained.
“Besides, he can’t make me out nowadays.”
“Surely the incomprehensible is one of the chief charms of faith and
friendship.”
“And anyway he’s going abroad to Switzerland—and I couldn’t possibly
fish for an invitation. It is rotten. Everything’s always the same.”
“Except in the Church of England. There you have an almost blatant
variety,” suggested the priest.
“You never will be serious when I want you to be,” grumbled Michael.
“Oh, yes I will, and to prove it,” said Mr. Viner, “I’m going to make a
suggestion of unparagoned earnestness.”
“What?”
“Now just let me diagnose your mental condition. You are sick of
everything—Thucydides, cabbage, cricket, school, schoolfellows,
certificates and life.”
“Well, you needn’t rag me about it,” Michael interrupted.
“In the Middle Ages gentlemen in your psychical perplexity betook
themselves either to the Crusades or entered a monastery. Now, why
shouldn’t you for these summer holidays betake yourself to a monastery?
I will write to the Lord Abbot, to your lady mother, and if you
consent, to the voluble Chator’s lady mother, humbly pointing out and
ever praying, etc., etc.”
“You’re not ragging?” asked Michael suspiciously. “Besides, what sort
of a monastery?”
“Oh, an Anglican monastery; but at the same time Benedictines of the
most unimpeachable severity. In short, why shouldn’t you and Mark
Chator go to Clere Abbas on the Berkshire Downs?”
“Are they strict?” enquired Michael. “You know, saying the proper
offices and all that, not the Day Hours of the English Church—that
rotten Anglican thing.”
“Strict!” cried Mr. Viner. “Why, they’re so strict that St.
Benedict himself, were he to abide again on earth, would
seriously consider a revision of his rules as interpreted by
Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B., the Lord Abbot of Clere.”
“It would be awfully ripping to go there,” said Michael
enthusiastically.
“Well then,” said Mr. Viner, “it shall be arranged. Meanwhile confer
with the voluble and sacerdotal Chator on the subject.”
The disappointment of the ungranted certificate, the ineffable tedium
of endless school, seaside lodgings and all the weighty ills of
Michael’s oppressed soul vanished on that wine-gold July noon when
Michael and Chator stood untrammelled by anything more than bicycles
and luggage upon the platform of the little station that dreamed its
trains away at the foot of the Downs.
“By Jove, we’re just like pilgrims,” said Michael, as his gaze followed
the aspiring white road which rippled upward to green summits quivering
in the haze of summer. The two boys left their luggage to be fetched
later by the Abbey marketing-cart, mounted their bicycles, waved a
good-bye to the friendly porter beaming among the red roses of the
little station and pressed energetically their obstinate pedals. After
about half a mile’s ascent they jumped from their machines and walked
slowly upwards until the station and clustering hamlet lay breathless
below them like a vision drowned deep in a crystal lake. As they went
higher a breeze sighed in the sun-parched grasses, and the lines and
curves of the road intoxicated them with naked beauty.
“I like harebells almost best of any flowers,” said Michael. “Do you?”
“They’re awfully like bells,” observed Chator.
“I wouldn’t care if they weren’t,” said Michael. “It’s only in London I
want things to be like other things.”
Chator looked puzzled.
“I can’t exactly explain what I mean,” Michael went on.
“But they make me want to cry just because they aren’t like
anything. You won’t understand what I mean if I explain ever so
much. Nobody could. But when I see flowers on a lovely road like
this, I get sort of frightened whether God won’t grow tired of
bothering about human beings. Because really, you know, Chator,
there doesn’t seem much good in our being on the earth at all.”
“I think that’s a heresy,” pronounced Chator. “I don’t know which one,
but I’ll ask Dom Cuthbert.”
“I don’t care if it is heresy. I believe it. Besides, religion must be
finding out things for yourself that have been found out already.”
“Finding out for yourself,” echoed Chator with a look of alarm. “I say,
you’re an absolute Protestant.”
“Oh, no I’m not,” contradicted Michael. “I’m a Catholic.”
“But you set yourself up above the Church.”
“When did I?” demanded Michael.
“Just now.”
“Because I said that harebells were ripping flowers?”
“You said a lot more than that,” objected Chator.
“What did I say?” Michael parried.
“Well, I can’t exactly remember what you said.”
“Then what’s the use of saying I’m a Protestant?” cried Michael in
triumph. “I think I’ll play footer again next term,” he added
inconsequently.
“I jolly well would,” Chator agreed. “You ought to have played last
football term.”
“Except that I like thinking,” said Michael. “Which is rotten in the
middle of a game. It’s jolly decent going to the monastery, isn’t it? I
could keep walking on this road for ever without getting tired.”
“We can ride again now,” said Chator.
“Well, don’t scorch, because we’ll miss all the decent flowers
if you do,” said Michael.
Then silently for awhile they breasted the slighter incline of the
summit.
“Only six weeks of these ripping holidays,” Michael sighed. “And then
damned old school again.”
“Hark!” shouted Chator suddenly. “I hear the Angelus.”
Both boys dismounted and listened. Somewhere, indeed, a bell was
chiming, but a bell of such quality that the sound of it through the
summer was like a cuckoo’s song in its unrelation to place. Michael and
Chator murmured their salute of the Incarnation, and perhaps for the
first time Michael half realized the mysterious condescension of God.
Here, high up on these downs, the Word became imaginable, a silence of
wind and sunlight.
“I say, Chator,” Michael began.
“What?”
“Would you mind helping me mark this place where we are?”
“Why?”
“Look here, you won’t think I’m pretending? but I believe I was
converted at that moment.”
Chator’s well-known look of alarm that always followed one of Michael’s
doctrinal or liturgical announcements was more profound than it had
ever been before.
“Converted?” he gasped. “What to?”
“Oh, not _to_ anything,” said Michael. “Only different from
what I was just now, and I want to mark the place.”
“Do you mean—put up a cross or something?”
“No, not a cross. Because, when I was converted, I felt a
sudden feeling of being frightfully alive. I’d rather put a
stone and plant harebells round it. We can dig with our
spanners. I like stones. They’re so frightfully old, and I’d
like to think, if I was ever a long way from here, of my stone
and the harebells looking at it—every year new harebells and
the same old stone.”
“Do you know what I think you are?” enquired Chator solemnly. “I think
you’re a mystic.”
“I never can understand what a mystic was,” said Michael.
“Nobody can,” said Chator encouragingly. “But lots of them were made
saints all the same. I don’t think you ever will be, because you do put
forward the most awfully dangerous doctrines. I do think you ought to
be careful about that. I do really.”
Chator was spluttering under the embarrassment of his own eloquence,
and Michael, delicately amused, looked at him with a quizzical smile.
Chator was older than Michael, and by reason of the apoplectic
earnestness of his appearance and manner, and the natural goodness of
him so sincerely, if awkwardly expressed, he had a certain influence
which Michael admitted to himself, however much in the public eye he
might affect to patronize Chator from his own intellectual eminence.
Along the road of speculation, however, Michael would not allow
Chator’s right to curb him, and he took a wilful pleasure in galloping
ahead over the wildest, loftiest paths. To shock old Chator was
Michael’s delight; and he never failed to do so.
“You see,” Chator spluttered, “it’s not so much what you say now;
nobody would pay any attention to you, and I know you don’t mean half
what you say; but later on you’ll begin to believe in all these
heretical ideas of your own. You’ll end up by being an Agnostic. Oh,
yes you will,” he raged with torrential prophecies, as Michael leaned
over the seat of his bicycle laughing consumedly. “You’ll go on and on
wondering this and that and improving the doctrines of the Church until
you improve them right away.”
“You are a funny old ass. You really are,” gurgled Michael.
“And what’s so funny to me is that just when I had a moment of
really believing you dash in with your
warnings and nearly spoil it all. By Jove, did you see that
Pale Clouded Yellow?” he shouted suddenly. “By Jove, I haven’t
seen one in England for an awful long time. I think I’ll begin
collecting butterflies again.”
Disputes of doctrine were flung to the wind that sang in their ears as
they mounted their bicycles and coasted swiftly from the bare green
summits of the downs into a deep lane overshadowed by oak-trees. Soon
they came to the Abbey gates, or rather to the place where the Abbey
gates would one day rise in Gothic commemoration of the slow
subscriptions of the faithful. At present the entrance was only marked
by a stony road disappearing abruptly at the behest of a painted
finger-post into verdurous solitudes. After wheeling their bicycles for
about a quarter of a winding mile, the two boys came to a large open
space in the wood and beheld Clere Abbey, a long low wooden building
set as piously near to the overgrown foundations of old Clere Abbey as
was possible.
“What a rotten shame,” cried Michael, “that they can’t build a decent
Abbey. Never mind, I think it’s going to be rather good sport here.”
They walked up to the door that seemed too massive for the flimsy pile
to which it gave entrance, and pealed the large bell that hung by the
side. Michael was pleased to observe a grille through which peered the
eyes of the monastic porter, inquisitive of the wayfarers. Then a bolt
shot back, the door opened, and Michael and Chator entered the
religious house.
“I’m Brother Ambrose,” said the porter, a stubby man with a flat
pock-marked face whose ugliness was redeemed by an expression of
wonderful innocence. “Dom Cuthbert is expecting you in the Abbot’s
Parlour.”
Michael and Chator followed Brother Ambrose through a pleasant
book-lined hall into the paternal haunt where the Lord Abbot of
Clere sat writing at a roll-top desk.
He rose to greet the boys, who with reverence perceived him to
be a tall dark angular man with glowing eyes that seemed very
deeply set on either side of his great hooked nose. He could
scarcely have been over thirty-five years of age, but he moved
with a languid awkwardness that made him seem older. His voice
was very remote and melodious as he welcomed them. Michael
looked anxiously at Chator to see if he followed any precise
ritual of salutation, but Dom Cuthbert solved the problem by
shaking hands at once and motioning them to wicker chairs
beside the empty hearth.
“Pleasant ride?” enquired Dom Cuthbert.
“Awfully decent,” said Michael. “We heard the Angelus a long way off.”
“A lovely bell,” murmured Dom Cuthbert. “Tubular. It was given to us by
the Duke of Birmingham. Come along, I’ll show you the Abbey, if you’re
not too tired.”
“Rather not,” Michael and Chator declared.
The Abbot led the way into the book-lined hall.
“This is the library. You can read here as much as you like. The
brethren sit here at recreation-time. This is the refectory,” he went
on, with distant chimings in his tone.
The two boys gazed respectfully at the bare trestle table and the
raised reading-desk and the picture of St. Benedict.
“Of course we haven’t much room yet,” Dom Cuthbert continued. “In fact
we have very little. People are very suspicious of monkery.”
He smiled tolerantly, and his voice faded almost out of the refectory,
as if it would soothe the harsh criticism of the world, hence
infinitely remote.
“But one day”—from worldly adventure his voice came back renewed with
hope—“one day, when we have some money, we shall build a real Abbey.”
“This is awfully ripping though, isn’t it?” observed Michael
with sympathetic encouragement.
“I dare say the founder of the Order was never so well housed,” agreed
the Abbot.
Dom Cuthbert led them to the guest-chamber, from which opened three
diminutive bedrooms.
“Your cells,” the monk said. “But of course you’ll feed in here,” he
added, indicating the small bare room in which they stood with so wide
a sweep of his ample sleeve that the matchboarded ceiling soared into
vast Gothic twilights and the walls were of stone. Michael was vaguely
reminded of Mr. Prout and his inadequate oratory.
“The guest-brother is Dom Gilbert,” continued the Abbot. “Come and see
the cloisters.”
They passed from the guest-room behind the main building and saw that
another building formed there the second side of a quadrangle. The
other two sides were still open to the hazel coppice that here
encroached upon the Abbey. However, there was traceable the foundations
of new buildings to complete the quadrangle, and a mass of crimson
hollyhocks were shining with rubied chalices in the quiet sunlight. For
all its incompleteness, this was a strangely beautiful corner of the
green world.
“Are these the cloisters?” Michael asked.
“One day, one day,” replied Dom Cuthbert. “A little rough at present,
but before I die I’m sure there will be a mighty edifice in this wood
to the glory of God and His saints.”
“I’d like it best that way,” said Michael. “Not all at once.”
He felt an imaginative companionship with the aspirations of the Abbot.
“Now we’ll visit the Chapel,” said Dom Cuthbert. “We built the
Chapel with our own hands of mud and stone and laths. You’ll
like the Chapel. Sometimes I feel quite sorry to think of
leaving it for the great Abbey Church we shall one day build
with the hands of workmen.”
The Chapel was reached by a short cloister of primitive construction,
and it was the simplest purest place of worship that Michael had ever
seen. It seemed to have gathered beneath its small roof the whole of
peace. On one side the hazel bushes grew so close that the windows
opened on to the mysterious green heart of life. Two curtains worked
with golden blazonries divided the quire from the congregation.
“This is where you’ll sit,” said Dom Cuthbert, pointing to two
kneeling-chairs on either side of the opening into the quire. “Perhaps
you’ll say a prayer now for the Order. The prayers of children travel
very swiftly to God.”
Dom Cuthbert passed to the Abbot’s stall to kneel, while Michael and
Chator knelt on the chairs. When they had prayed for awhile, the Abbot
took them into the sacristy and showed them the vestments and the
sacred vessels of the altar, and from the sacristy door they passed
into a straight woodland way.
“The Abbot’s walk,” said Dom Cuthbert, with a beautiful smile. “The
brethren cut this wonderful path during their hours of recreation. I
cannot envy any cloisters with this to walk in. How soft is the moss
beneath our feet, and in Spring how loudly the birds sing here. The
leaves come very early, too, and linger very late. It is a wonderful
path. Now I must go and work. I have a lot of letters to write. Explore
the woods and the downs and enjoy yourselves. You’ll find the rules
that the guests must observe pinned to the wall of the guest-room.
Enjoy yourselves and be content.”
The tall figure of the monk with its languid awkwardness of gait
disappeared from the Abbot’s walk, and the two boys, arm-in-arm,
wandered off in the opposite direction.
“Everything was absolutely correct,” burbled Chator. “Oh, yes,
absolutely. Not at all Anglican. Perfectly correct. I’m glad.
I’m really very glad. I was a bit afraid
at first it might be Anglican. But it’s not—oh, no, not at
all.”
In the guest-chamber they read the rules for guests, and discovered to
their mortification that they were not expected to be present at Matins
and Lauds.
“I was looking forward to getting up at two o’clock,” said Michael.
“Perhaps Dom Cuthbert will let us sometimes. It’s really much easier to
get up at two o’clock than five. Mass is at half-past five, and we must
go to that.”
Dom Gilbert, the guest-brother, came in with plates of bread and cheese
while the boys were reading the rules, and they questioned him about
going to Matins. He laughed and said they would have as much church as
they wished without being quite such strict Benedictines as that.
Michael was not sure whether he liked Dom Gilbert—he was such a very
practical monk.
“If you go to Mass and Vespers and Compline every day,” said Dom
Gilbert, “you’ll do very well. And please be punctual for your meals.”
Michael and Chator looked injured.
“Breakfast after Mass. Bread and cheese at twelve. Cup of tea at five,
if you’re in. Supper at eight.”
Dom Gilbert left them abruptly to eat their bread and cheese alone.
“He’s rather a surly chap,” grumbled Michael. “He doesn’t seem to me
the right one to have chosen for guest-brother at all. I had a lot I
wanted to ask him. For one thing I don’t know where the lav. is. I
think he’s a rotten guest-brother.”
The afternoon passed in a walk along the wide ridge of the
downs through the amber of this fine summer day. Several hares
were seen and a kestrel, while Chator disposed very volubly of
the claims of several Anglican clergymen to Catholicism. After
tea in the hour of recreation they met the other monks, Dom
Gregory the organist, Brother
George and Brother William. It was not a very large monastery.
Chator found the Vespers somewhat trying to his curiosity,
because owing to the interposition of the curtain he was unable
to criticize the behaviour of the monks in quire. This made him
very fidgety, and rather destroyed Michael’s sense of peace.
However, Chator restrained his ritualistic ardour very well at
Compline, which in the dimness of the starlit night was a
magical experience, as one by one with raised cowls the monks
entered in black procession and silence absolute. Michael,
where he knelt in the ante-chapel, was profoundly moved by the
intimate responses and the severe Compline hymn. He liked, too,
the swift departure to bed without chattering good-nights to
spoil the solemnity of the last Office. Even Chator kept all
conversation for the morning, and Michael felt he had never
lain down upon a couch so truly sanctified, nor ever risen from
one so pure as when Dom Gilbert knocked with a hammer on the
door and, standing dark against the milk-white dawn, murmured
‘Pax vobiscum.’