“Relieve your mind, my son.”
“About fourteen years ago, I dined with a woman whose husband was a great friend of mine. Her two children dined with us—a girl of fifteen, a boy of thirteen. Her husband was away on business for a few months. Soon after dinner, she sent the children to bed. A few minutes later she went to say good-night to them: she was an excellent mother. I remained in the drawing-room. When she returned, I was standing to take my departure. As she entered, she closed the door and switched off the electric light. I instinctively struck a match. She laughed, apologising for being absent-minded. I said the usual polite idioms and went away. A fortnight later, I dined there again by invitation. All went on as before: but this time, when she came back from saying good-night to the children she was wearing a violet flannel dressing-gown. I said nothing at all; and instantly left her. Afterwards, I gave her the cut direct in the street. I never have spoken to her since. Her husband was a good man, a martyr, and I immensely admired him. He died a few years later. I have no feeling for her except detestation. She was wickedly ugly. Vague thoughts ensued from these incidents; thoughts not connected with her but with some sensuous idea, some phasma of my imagination. They never were more than thoughts. I think that I must have delighted in them, because they returned to me perhaps twelve or fourteen times in as many years. I confess these sins of thought. Also, I think that I ought to confess myself lacking in alacrity after the first switching off of the electric light; and that I never ought to have remained alone with that woman again. I was ridiculously dense: for, only after the second event, did I see what the first had portended. I confess that I have not kept my senses in proper custody. I place no restraint whatever upon sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, except in so far as my natural sympathies or antipathies direct me. I cultivate them and refine them and sharpen them: but never mortify them. I hardly ever practise self-denial. Even when I do, I catch myself extracting elements of æsthetic enjoyment from it. For example, I was present at the amputation of a leg. Under anæsthetics, directly the saw touched the marrow of the thigh bone, the other leg began to kick. I was next to it; and the surgeon told me to hold it still. It was ghastly: but I did. And then I actually caught myself admiring the exquisite silky texture of human skin. . . . Father, I am my Master’s most unfaithful servant. I am a very sorry Christian. I confess all these sins, all the sins which I cannot remember, all the sins of my life. I implore pardon of God; and from thee, O Father, penance and absolution. Therefore I beseech blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, blessed Michael Archangel, Blessed John Baptist, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all Saints, and thee, O Father, to pray for me to The Lord our God.”
“My son, do you love God?”
From silence, tardily the response emerged, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. He is Δημιουργος, Maker of the World to me. He is Άγαθον to me, Truth and Righteousness and Beauty. He is Πανταναξ, Lord of All to me. He is First. He is Last. He is Perfect. He is Supreme. I believe in God, the Father Almighty; I believe in God the Son, Redeemer of the World; I believe in God the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the Lifegiver; One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. I absolutely believe in Him. There isn’t in my mind the slightest shade of a question about Him. I unconditionally trust Him. I am not afraid of Him, because I can’t think of Him as anything but righteous and merciful. To think otherwise would be both absurd and unfair to myself. And I’m quite sure that I’m ready and willing and delighted to make any kind of sacrifice for Him. I don’t know why. So far, I clearly see. Then, in my mind, there comes a great gap,—filled with fog.”
“Do you love your neighbour?”
“No, I frankly detest him, and her. Let me explain. Most people are repulsive to me, because they are ugly in person: more, because they are ugly in manner: many, because they are ugly in mind. Not that I never met people different to these. I have. People have occurred to me with whom I should like to be in sympathy. But I have been unable to get near enough to them. I seem to be a thing apart. I can’t understand my neighbour. What satisfies him does not satisfy me. Once I induced a young lover to let me read his love-letters. He brought them every day for a week. His love had appeared to be a perfect idyll, pure and lovely as a flower. Well—I never read such rot in my life: simply categories of features and infantile gibberish done in the style of a housemaid’s novelette. It made me sick. This kind of thing annoys me, terrifies me. You see, I want to understand my neighbour in order to love him. But I don’t think I know what love is. But I want to—badly.”
“Do you love yourself?”
“Father, do you mean the essence of me, or the form?”
“Yourself?”
“Well, of course I look after my body, and cultivate my mind: I’m afraid I don’t pay enough attention to my soul. I certainly don’t admire my person. That’s all wrong. I can pick out a hundred deviations from the canon of proportion in it. Lysippos would have had a fit. And the tint is not quite pure. I make the best of it: but I don’t think it matters much. As for my mind, I suppose I’m clever in a way, compared with other people: but I’m not half as clever as I’m supposed to be, or as I should like to be. In fact I’m rather more of a stupid ignoramus than otherwise. Naturally I stick up for myself, when I care to, against others: but, to myself, I despise myself. Oh I’m not interesting. On the whole, I think that I despise myself, body, mind, and soul. If I thought that they would be any good to anyone else, I’d throw them away to-morrow—if I could do it neatly and tidily and completely and with no one there to make remarks. They’re no particular pleasure to me——”
“My son, tell me what would give you pleasure.”
“Nothing. Father, I’m tired. Really nothing—except to flee away and be at rest.”
“My son, that is actually the longing of your soul for God whatever. Cultivate that longing, oh cultivate it with all your powers. It will lead you to love Him; and then your longing will be satisfied, for God is love, as St. John tells us. Thank Him with all your heart for this great gift of longing: besiege Him day and night for an increase of it. At the same time, remember the words of Christ our Saviour, how He said, If ye love Me, keep My Commandments. Remember that He definitely commands you to love your neighbour, This is My Commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you. Mortify those keen senses of that vile body, which by God’s grace you are already moved to despise. In the words of St. Paul, keep it under and bring it into subjection. And do try to love your neighbour. Lay yourself out to be his servant: for Love is Service. Serve the servants of God; and you will learn to love God; and His servants for His sake. You have tasted the pleasures of the world, and they are as ashes in your mouth. You say that there is nothing to give you pleasure. That is a good sign. Cultivate that detachment from the world which is but for a moment and then passeth away. In the tremendous dignity to which you are about to be called—the dignity of the priesthood—be ever mindful of the vanity of worldly things. As a priest, you will be subject to fiercer temptations than those which assault you now. Brace up the great natural strength of your will to resist them. Continue to despise yourself. Begin to love your neighbour. Continue—yes, continue—unconsciously, but soon consciously, to love God. My son, the key to all your difficulties, present and to come, is Love. . . . For your penance you will say—well, the penance for minor orders is rather long—for your penance you will say the Divine Praises with the celebrant after mass. Now renew your sorrow for all your past sins, and say after me, O my God—because by my sins I have deserved hell—and have lost my claim to heaven—I am truly sorry that I have offended Thee—and I firmly resolve—by Thy Grace—to avoid sin for the time to come.—O my God—because Thou art infinitely Good—and Most Worthy of all love—I grieve from my heart for having sinned against Thee—and I purpose—by Thy Grace—never more to offend Thee for the time to come. . . . ego te absolvo ✠ in Nomine Patris et Filj et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Go in peace and pray for me.”
* * * * *
George listened, regretting that he had not the paper and a cigarette all to himself: but the coffee was not bad; and the ponderous irritation of his matutinal headache was disappearing. He took another cup. He remembered how he had laughed at an Occ. Note in the Pall Mall Gazette some few months before, to the effect that the old tradition of antipathy between the two peoples separated by the Channel was as dead as Georgian England and the era of the Bien-Aimé, and suggesting that the two leading democracies of the world—(England a democracy indeed!)—ought to live on terms of good understanding and neighbourliness, or some such tomfoolery. How could two walk together unless they were agreed? And on what single permanent and vital essential were England and France agreed? George could think of none, any more than Nelson could. Commerce? Yes, perhaps some fools thought so, forgetful that commerce fluctuates from day to day, and that it is the spawning-bed of individual and international rivalry. No. He had no confidence in France. She openly had been accumulating combustibility these five years; and here was the conflagration. This seemed to be a thoroughly French revolution, sudden, sanguinary, flamboyant, engendered by self-esteem on instability, and produced with élan and theatrical effect. Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties—French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Cæsar made a note of them for all time.
George detected himself in the very act of affixing a label to a nation. He brought down his will with a thud on his critical faculty. The bishop looked at the cardinal, suggesting that Mr. Rose was accustomed to smoke over his meals.
“Don’t you find it bad for the digestion?” the cardinal inquired in the tone of an archbishop to an acolyth. An access of genial gentlehood, and something else, to which George at the moment was unable to put a name, suddenly infused his manner when he had spoken.
“I don’t think I have a digestion. At least it never manifests itself to me.”
“Happy man!” the cardinal exclaimed to no one in particular: adding, “Well perhaps we might go upstairs; and Mr. Rose can have his cigarette and listen to me at the same time.”
The room to which they went was a private cabinet, a very vermilion and gold room, large, airy, princely. The cardinal took a long envelope from the bureau.
“I think you will find that correct, Mr. Rose,” he said. “You had better open it before we go any further.”
The contents were a blank cheque book, and a bankbook containing Messrs. Coutts’s acknowledgment of the credit of ten thousand pounds to the current account of the Reverend George Arthur Rose.
Notwithstanding his natural hypersensibility, that peculiar individual did not become the plaything of his emotions until some time after the event which brought them into action. At the moment when blows or blessings fell upon him, he rarely was conscious of more than a crab is conscious of when its shell is struck or stroked. Later, when he deliberately set himself to analyse consequences, all his senses throbbed and tingled. But, at first, he was wont to act, on the impulse certainly:—but to act. Having acquainted himself with the contents of the envelope, he took out his beloved Waterman, saying
“I’m sure Your Eminency will let me have the pleasure of writing my first cheque here.”
He handed to the cardinal a draft for five thousand pounds, payable to bearer. It afterwards occurred to him that he could have taken no more cynical way of testing the reality of this fortune. He felt ashamed of himself, for he hated cynicism. The act itself merely was the act of a man awakening from a vivid dream and automatically doing what he had resolved, before falling asleep, to do. In effect, it was by way of being a pinch of a kind to himself. There was no doubt whatever but that it was a pinch of another kind to the cardinal. Followed alternately disclaimers, stolidity, embarrassment, humility, unction: the cheque went into the bureau, the cheque-book and the bank-book into the pocket of George’s jacket.
And now, what was the extent of his theological studies? His general knowledge of course was unexceptional: but special knowledge—theology? Well, in Dogma he had done the treatises On Grace—“a very difficult treatise, Mr. Rose”—and On the Church—“a very important treatise, Mr. Rose;”—and in Moral Theology he had read Lehmkuhl, especially On the Eucharist and On Penance,—“nothing could be better, Mr. Rose.” These had been the subjects of the professorial lectures at Maryvale. During the years which had elapsed since then, he had read them again and again, until he thought he had them at his fingers’ ends. As for Cardinal Franzelin’s De Ecclesia (that was the Maryvale text-book), he found it one of the most fascinating books in the world. In fact, it was a regular bedside book of his: and by this time he knew it by heart. Being a man of letters, of course he would like to enlarge it a little, to put a gloss upon it here and there, perhaps even to expand the thesis at certain points. St. Augustine’s Enchiridion was another favourite book. And St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo was another. His reading was extensive and curious: but, sad to say, desultory and unsystematic, because undirected. He had read the standard works as a matter of duty: but he had made a far more exhaustive study of obscure writers. The occult, white magic bien entendue, was intensely interesting, the book on Demoniality by Fr. Sinistrari of Ameno, for example. Perhaps it would be desirable for him to tabulate the sum of his studies, that His Eminency might decide whether to have him examined in those or to submit him to a fresh course.
“Quite unnecessary, Mr. Rose. And now touching the matter of ceremonial.”
He had made a point of mastering Martinucci, practice as well as theory. It was astonishing what a lot could be done with a guide-book, a few household-implements, and imagination. He was aware that he had practised under difficulties: but a few rehearsals beneath the eye of an expert——
“And Canon Law?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Well, well, just those few treatises in Dogmatic and Moral Theology in particular, and a large amount of random reading in general. Of course the Grace of God can supply all our deficiencies. I myself—— Things which are hidden from the wise and prudent oft-times are revealed unto—oh yes! Well, Mr. Rose, it is not a large, or, humanly speak
ing, an adequate equipment for—for the priesthood, certainly. But we must consider the years which you have waited. Yes. Well, perhaps we had better waste no more time now. Go home and pack your bag: and come and stay with me for a little till we can settle on your future. I shall give you the subdiaconate to-morrow morning; and you can arrange to say your first Mass on Sunday in the cathedral.”
“My first Mass must be a black mass, Eminency.”
The cardinalitial eyebrows would go up.
“It is a long-planned intention, Eminency: it is all I can do.”
“I quite understand, Mr. Rose. You would wish to say your first mass quietly and alone. You shall say it in the private chapel. The Bishop of Caerleon would like to be your assistant; and—ha—I shall be very glad if you will allow me to serve you.”
George looked from the cardinal to the bishop; and back again. After storm, this was calm and peace, with a vengeance.
[1]This onomatopoiia presents the English Catholic pronunciation of “His Eminency.”
[2] This onomatopoiia presents the English Catholic pronunciation of “Your Eminency.”
CHAPTER I
What was causing the special correspondents in Rome to exude the subterfuges, with which (as a pis-aller) they are accustomed to gain their daily bread, was no such recondite matter after all.
Just as Jews are less commercial, and Jesuits less cunning, so journalists are less capable than they are supposed to be. As a matter of fact, they are quite unscientific persons, in that they go about their business in a fortuitous manner trusting to the human element called “smartness” for producing their effects. They have not yet realized the instability of all human elements. The superhuman is a sealed book to them. They mean oh so well: but they have no knowledge of first principles. They invariably commit the unpardonable error of confounding universals with particulars: because the influence of fragile or unworthy authority, custom, the imperfection of undisciplined senses, and concealment of ignorance by ostentation of seeming wisdom, are as stumbling-blocks which obstruct their path to Truth. Add to this a lack of sympathetic intuition and of an historical knowledge of their subject. They take no end of pains to acquire a fluid style of writing; and it may be admitted that, within their limitations, they can describe the superficies of almost anything which may be shoved under their noses. But, as for giving a scientific description (under such heads, for example, as the Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final Causes,) so that one can derive a satisfactory understanding of the thing described,—that is beyond their power.
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