Part 30 (1/2)

He made one last effort; the vision pa.s.sed and he stood up, feeling once more sensation come back, understanding that he had saved himself from an extinction more utter than that of death.

”Well,” he said quietly--so quietly that he almost deceived himself too,--”well, I will remember what you say, Dom Adrian, and I will do what I can with the Cardinal.”

CHAPTER IV

(I)

”I'm afraid it's been a great shock,” said Father Jervis soothingly. ”And I'm not surprised, after your illness. . . . Yes I quite see your point. Of course it must seem very strange. . . . Now what about coming over to Ireland for a week?

The Cardinal will be delighted, I'm sure.”

The blow had fallen this morning--a fortnight after the trial had ended.

First, the answer had come back from Rome that the sentence was ratified--a sentence simply to the effect that the Church could no longer protect this tonsured and consecrated son of hers from the secular laws. But, as Monsignor knew privately, an urgent appeal had been made by Rome to remit the penalty in this instance, as in others. Then the formalities of handing over the monk to the secular authorities had taken place, in accordance with the Clergy Discipline Amendment Act of 1964--an Act by which the secular houses of Representatives had pa.s.sed a code of penalties for clerks condemned by the ecclesiastical courts--clerks, that is to say, who had availed themselves of Benefit of Clergy and had submitted themselves to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Under that Act Dom Adrian had been removed to a secular prison, his case had been re-examined and, in spite of the Pope's appeal, the secular sentence pa.s.sed. And this morning Monsignor had read that the sentence had been carried out. . . .

He neither knew nor dared to ask in what form. It was enough that it was death.

There had been a scene with the startled secretaries. Fortunately Monsignor had been incoherent. One of them had remained with him while the other ran for Father Jervis. Then the two laymen had left the room, and the priests alone together.

Things were quieter now. Monsignor had recovered himself, and was sitting white and breathless with his friend beside him.

”Come to Ireland for a week,” said the old man again, watching him with those large, steady, bright eyes of his. ”It is perfectly natural, under the circ.u.mstances, that the thing should be a shock. To us, of course----”

He broke off as Monsignor looked up with a strange white glare in his eyes.

”Well, well,” said the old man. ”You must give yourself a chance.

You've been working magnificently; I think perhaps a little too hard. And we don't want another breakdown. . . . Then I take you'll come to Ireland? We'll spend a perfectly quiet week, and be back in time for the meeting of Parliament.”

Monsignor made a small movement of a.s.sent with his head. (He had had Ireland explained to him before.)

”Then I'll leave you quietly here for a little. Call me up if you want me. I'll tell the secretaries to work in the next room. I'll see the Cardinal at once, and we'll go by the five o'clock boat.

I'll arrange everything. You needn't give it a thought.”

A curious process seemed to have been at work upon the mind of the man who had lost his memory, since his interview with the monk immediately after the trial. At first a kind of numbness had descended upon him. He had gone back to his business, his correspondence, his interviews, his daily consultation with the Cardinal, and had conducted all these things efficiently enough.

Yet, underneath, the situation arranged itself steadily and irresistibly. It had become impressed upon him that, whether for good or evil, the world was as it was; that Christian civilization had taken the form which he perceived round him, and that to struggle against it was as futile, from a mental point of view, as to resent the physical laws of the universe. Nothing followed upon such resistance except intense discomfort to oneself. It might be insupportably unjust that one could not fly without wings, yet the fact remained. It might be intolerably unchristian that a tonsured clerk should be put to death for heresy, yet he was put to death, and not a soul, it seemed (not even the victim himself) resented it. Dom Adrian's protest had been not against the execution of heretics, but against the statement that he was a heretic. But he had refused to submit to a decision which he acknowledged as authoritative, and found no fault therefore with the consequence of such refusal. The condemnation, he granted, was perfectly legal and therefore extrinsically l.u.s.t; and it was the penalty he had to pay for an individualism which the responsible authorities of the State regarded as dangerous to the conditions on which society rested.

And the rest was the business of the State, not of the Church.

The scheme then was beginning to grow clear to this man's indignant eyes. Even the ”repression” of the Socialists fitted in, logically and inexorably. And he began to understand a little more what Dom Adrian had meant. There stood indeed, imminent over the world (whether ideally or actually was another question) a tremendous Figure that was already even more Judge than Saviour--a Personality that already had the Power and reigned; one to whose feet all the world crept in silence, who spoke ordinarily and normally through His Vicar on earth, who was represented on this or that plane by that court or the other; one who was literally a King of kings; to whose model all must be conformed; to whose final judgment every creature might appeal if he would but face that death through which alone that appeal might be conveyed. Such was the scheme which this priest began to discern; and he saw how the explanation of all that bewildered him lay within it. Yet none the less he resented it; none the less he failed to recognize in it that Christianity he seemed once to have known, long ago. Outwardly he conformed and submitted.

Inwardly he was a rebel.

He sat on silent for a few minutes when his friend had left him, gradually recovering balance. He knew his own peril well enough, but he was not yet certain enough of his own standpoint--and perhaps not courageous enough--to risk all by declaring it. He felt helpless and powerless--like a child in a new school--before the tremendous forces in whose presence he found himself. For the present, at least, he knew that he must obey. . . .

(II)