The King's Achievement

by Robert Hugh Benson

  CHAPTER II

  SACERDOS IN AETERNUM

  It was a day of wonderful autumn peace when Chris first sang mass in thepresence of the Community.

  The previous day he had received priesthood from the hands of the littleold French bishop in the priory church; one by one strange mysticalceremonies had been performed; the stole had been shifted and crossed onthe breast, the token of Christ's yoke; the chasuble had been placedover his head, looped behind; then the rolling cry to the Spirit of Godwho alone seals to salvation and office had pealed round the high roofand down the long nave that stretched away westwards in sunlit gloom;while across the outstretched hands of the monk had been streaked thesacred oil, giving him the power to bless the things of God. The handswere bound up, as if to heal the indelible wound of love that had beeninflicted on them; and, before they were unbound, into the hamperedfingers were slid the sacred vessels of the altar, occupied now by theelements of bread and wine; while the awful power to offer sacrifice forthe quick and the dead was committed to him in one tremendous phrase.

  Then the mass went on; and the new priest, kneeling with Dom Anthony ata little bench set at the foot of the altar steps, repeated aloud withthe bishop the words of the liturgy from the great painted missal lyingbefore him.

  How strange it had been too when all was over! He stood by a pillar inthe nave, beneath St. Pancras's image, while all came to receive hisblessing. First, the Prior, pale and sullen, as always now; then theCommunity, some smiling and looking into his eyes before they knelt,some perfunctory, some solemn and sedate with downcast faces; eachkissed the fragrant hands, and stood aside, while the laity came up; andfirst among them his father and Mary.

  His place too in the refectory had a flower or two laid beside it; andthe day had gone by in a bewildering dream. He had walked with hisfather and sister a little, and had found himself smiling and silent intheir company.

  In the evening he had once more gone through the ceremonies of mass, DomAnthony stood by, and watched and reminded and criticised. And now themorning was come, and he stood at the altar.

  * * * * *

  The little wind had dropped last night, and the hills round Lewes stoodin mellow sunlight; the atmosphere was full of light and warmth, thattender glow that falls on autumn days; the trees in the court outsidestood, poised on the brink of sleep, with a yellow pallor tinging theirleaves; the thousand pigeons exulted and wheeled in the intoxicatingair.

  The shadowy church was alight with sunshine that streamed through theclerestory windows on to the heavy pillars, the unevenly paved floor,and crept down the recumbent figures of noble and bishop from head tofoot. There were a few people present beyond the screen, Sir James andhis daughter in front, watching with a tender reverence the harvestingof the new priest, as he prepared to gather under his hands the mysticalwheat and grapes of God.

  Chris was perfectly practised in his ceremonies; and there was noanxiety to dissipate the overpowering awe that lay on his soul. He feltat once natural and unreal; it was supremely natural that he should behere; he could not conceive being other than a priest; there was in hima sense of a relaxed rather than an intensified strain; and yet thewhole matter was strange and intangible, as he felt the supernaturalforces gathering round, and surging through his soul.

  He was aware of a dusky sunlit space about him, of the glimmer of thehigh candles; and nearer of the white cloth, the shining vessels, thegorgeous missal, and the rustle of the ministers' vestments. But thewhole was shot with an inner life, each detail was significant andsacramental; and he wondered sometimes at the inaudible vibration thatstirred the silent air round him, as he spoke the familiar words towhich he had listened so often.

  He kept his eyes resolutely down as he turned from time to time,spreading his hands to the people, and was only partly conscious of thefaces watching him from the dark stalls in front and the sunlit navebeyond. Even the sacred ministers, Dom Anthony and another, seemed to belittle more than crimson impersonal figures that moved and went abouttheir stately business with deft and gracious hands.

  As he began to penetrate more nearly to the heart of the mystery, andthe angels' song before the throne rolled up from the choir, there wasan experience of a yet further retirement from the things of sense. Eventhe glittering halpas, and the gleams of light above it where the fivechapels branched behind--even these things became shrouded; there wasjust a sheet of white beneath him, the glow of a chalice, and the paledisc of the sacrificial bread.

  Then, as he paused, with hands together--"_famulorum famularumquetuarum"_--there opened out the world where his spirit was bending itsintention. Figure after figure came up and passed before his closedeyes, and on each he turned the beam of God's grace. First Ralph,sneering and aloof in his rich dress, intent on some Satanicbusiness;--Chris seized as it were the power of God, and enveloped andpenetrated him with it. Then Margaret, waiting terrified on the divinewill; his mother in her complacent bitterness; Mary; his father--and ashe thought of him it seemed as if all God's blessings were not toogreat; Nicholas; his own brethren in religion, his Prior, contracted andparalysed with terror; Dom Anthony, with his pathetic geniality....

  Ah! how short was the time; and yet so long that the Prior looked upsharply, and the deacon shifted in his rustling silk.

  Then again the hands opened, and the stately flood of petition pouredon, as through open gates to the boundless sea that awaited it, wherethe very heart of God was to absorb it into Itself.

  The great names began to flit past, like palaces on a river-brink, theirbases washed by the pouring liturgy--Peter and Paul, Simon and Thaddeus,Cosmas and Damian--vast pleasure houses alight with God, while near athand now gleamed the line of the infinite ocean.

  The hands came together, arched in blessing; and it marked the firststing of the healing water, as the Divine Essence pushed forward to meetman's need.

  _"Hanc igitur oblationem ..._"

  Then followed the swift silent signs, as if the pilot were orderingsails out to meet the breeze.

  The muttering voice sank to a deliberate whisper, the ripples ceased toleap as the river widened, and Chris was delicately fingering the whitelinen before taking the Host into his hands.

  There was a swift glance up, as to the great Sun that burned overhead,one more noiseless sign, and he sank forward in unutterable awe, withhis arms on the altar, and the white disc, hovering on the brink ofnon-existence, beneath his eyes.

  * * * * *

  The faintest whisper rose from behind as the people shifted theirconstrained attitudes. Sir James glanced up, his eyes full of tears, atthe distant crimson figure beneath the steady row of lights, motionlesswith outspread hands, poised over the bosom of God's Love.

  The first murmured words broke the silence; as if next to the InfinitePity rose up the infinite need of man--_Nobis quoque peccatoribus_--andsank to silence again.

  Then loud and clear rang out _Per omnia saecula saeculorum;_ and thechoir of monks sang _Amen_.

  So the great mystery moved on, but upborne now by the very Presenceitself that sustained all things. From the limitless sea of mercy, thechildren cried through the priest's lips to their Father who was inheaven, and entreated the Lamb of God who takes away sin to have mercyon them and give them peace.

  Then from far beyond the screen Mary could see how the priest leaning alittle forward towards That which he bore in his hands, looked on whathe bore in them; and she whispered softly with him the words that he wasspeaking. _Ave in aeternum sanctissima caro Christi_ ...

  Again she hid her face; and when she raised it once, all was over, andthe Lord had entered and sanctified the body and soul of the man atwhose words He had entered the creature of bread.

  The father and daughter stood together silently in the sunshine outsidethe west end of the church, waiting for Chris. He had promised to cometo them there for a moment when his thanksgiving was done.

  Beyond the wall, and the guest-house
where the Visitors had lived thosetwo disastrous days, rose up the far sunlit downs, shadowed here andthere with cup-like hollows, standing like the walls about Jerusalem.

  As they turned, on the right above the red roofs of the town, rose thedowns again, vast slopes and shoulders, over which Chris had ridden soshort a while ago bearded and brown with hunting. It was over there thatRalph had come, through that dip, which seemed against the skyline abreach in a high wall.

  Ah! surely God would spare this place; so stately and quiet, sograciously sheltered by the defences that He Himself had raised! If allEngland tottered and fell, this at least might stand, this vast home ofprayer that stirred day and night with the praises of the Eternal andthe petitions of the mortal--this glorious house where a priest so dearto them had brought forth from his mystical paternity the very Son ofGod!

  The door opened behind them, and Chris came out pale and smiling with alittle anxious-eyed monk beside him. His eyes lightened as he saw themstanding there; but he turned again for a moment.

  "Yes--father," he said. "What was it?"

  "You stayed too long," said the other, "at the _famularumque tuarum_;the rubric says _nullus nimis immoretur_, you know;--_nimis immoretur_."

  "Yes," said Chris.