AT PARKMINSTER
There was a different spirit in Witley Camp than there had been at
Bramshott; for in the whole division--twelve battalions of infantry and
three brigades of artillery, etc.,--was the one feeling of expectation
of soon going overseas. Any day the orders might come.
Father Hingston had made a retreat in London, and Father Crochetiere
had just returned from five days’ rest and prayer at the wonderful
monastery of the Carthusian Fathers, at Parkminster. I decided to go
there.
The following Monday, late in the afternoon, I drove up the winding
drive, through hawthorn hedges, to the gates of the monastery.
Everything seemed very quiet; no one appeared in garden or window. A
bell-rope hung outside the blue-grey door. I pulled it quickly. From
somewhere within came a great clanging, and almost simultaneously a
clatter of heavy boots on stone flags. Inside, a bolt shot back, and
immediately a white-garbed, white-bearded old brother stood before me,
smiling in the opening. He shook hands with me and bade me enter.
“We have been expecting you, Father,” he said, with that gentle
courtesy that one finds in a religious house. He took my grip,
notwithstanding every protest and led me along the rough, stone-floored
corridor to the Guest House, where I was given a large, airy corner
room, plainly though adequately furnished. Snow-white sheets were on
the bed--I had not seen sheets for a long time.
The old white brother told me to sit down,--that presently the Retreat
Master would come. Then he left me. I went over to a window and looked
out. Just below was a large garden with rose-fringed walks, enclosed
by a very high stone wall. Outside the wall green fields, fringed with
dark trees, stretched far away. Beyond these, rolling Sussex downs,
looking greyish-blue in the summer haze, rose to meet the skyline.
A strange peace was everywhere, and save for a slight nervousness that
seemed to have come to me with the great silence of the house, I was
glad that I had come.
In a little while a knock sounded on the door and the Retreat Master
entered. He was not very tall, and rather slight, and though his hair
was grey he was not old. There was nothing very distinctive in his
face, now rough with a three-days’ growth of beard--the rule of the
order is to shave every fifteen days--and there was not much color in
his cheeks. The eyes were small, grey and almost piercing. But there
was that same indefinable atmosphere of peace about him. It seemed
as if he had stepped aside from the great noisy highway of the world
to listen in silence to the voice of God. Yet, as he talked, the
Father seemed to take a childish interest in all that I told him of
my experiences in a great military camp with officers and men of the
world. But away below the wonder that rippled over the surface of the
spirit of the monk there seemed to be great depths of silence, and as
I tried to fathom these depths, I felt a strange helplessness come
over me. I could not understand this man who sat smiling simply and
cordially, and at the same time seemed to be enveloped in an atmosphere
not of this world.
Before he left for the evening the Retreat Master pointed to a card
that hung on the wall. “The Order of Retreat,” he said. “You will be
able to follow it?”
I assured the Father that I would, and then he was gone for the night.
My retreat passed very quickly--I had only five days--and during that
time I forgot all about war and preparations for war. Every day for
about half an hour the Retreat Master came to my room and talked a
little. He told me many things about the monastic life that I found
very interesting. Each monk, he explained, lived in a little brick
two-story house which was attached to the great main corridor that
formed a quadrangle about the church. The lower story was a kind of
workshop in which was a lathe and different kinds of carpenters’ tools,
and to it the monk descended in his free time to do manual work. A
small garden, in between the different houses, was allotted to each
monk, where he worked for a while each day and grew vegetables for his
own frugal board.
One day I told the Retreat Master that I had read a description
of Parkminster in one of the late Monsignor Benson’s novels, “The
Conventionalists.”
The monk smiled reminiscently. He recalled the day that Mr. Benson--he
was an Anglican at the time of his visit--in company with another
minister, had called. Mr. Benson had seemed very much interested. The
other had made some strange remark. Monsignor Benson had never visited
the Monastery as a priest, nor had he ever brought any one there to
join the community. The monk assured me of this, and he had been Guest
Master for many years. Yet when I had read “The Conventionalists”
I had been almost convinced that the story related was a personal
experience. It may have been to some other monastery that the young man
had gone, although Monsignor Benson had said Parkminster.
Shortly before I left the monastery the Retreat Master came to have a
last chat. “When you reach the front,” he said, “tell your men that we
are praying for them day after day, night after night.”
I felt a strange feeling of security on hearing these words, but as I
left the monastery gates and turned to say farewell to the old monk, I
felt a distinct sinking of my heart. “Perhaps,” he said rapturously,
“you’ll be a martyr!”