DIVISION
Mark was vexed with himself for evading the responsibility of recording his opinion. His vote would not have changed the direction of the policy; but if he had voted against giving up the house at Aldershot, the Father Superior would have had to record the casting vote in favour of his own proposal, and whatever praise or blame was ultimately awarded to the decision would have belonged to him alone, who as head of the Order was best able to bear it. Mark's whole sympathy had been on the side of Brother George, and as one who had known at first hand the work in Aldershot, he did feel that it ought not to be abandoned so easily. Then when Brother Athanasius was speaking, Mark, in his embarrassment at such violence of manner and tone, picked up a volume lying on the table by his elbow that by reading he might avoid the eyes of his brethren until Brother Athanasius had ceased to shout. It was the Rule of St. Benedict which, with a print of Fra Angelico's Crucifixion and an image of St. George, was all the decoration allowed to the bare Chapter Room, and the page at which Mark opened the leather-bound volume was headed: DE PRAEPOSITO MONASTERII.
"It happens too often that through the appointment of the Prior grave scandals arise in monasteries, since some there be who, puffed up with a malignant spirit of pride, imagining themselves to be second Abbots, and assuming unto themselves a tyrannous authority, encourage scandals and create dissensions in the community. . . .
"Hence envy is excited, strife, evil-speaking, jealousy, discord, confusion; and while the Abbot and the Prior run counter to each other, by such dissension their souls must of necessity be imperilled; and those who are under them, when they take sides, are travelling on the road to perdition. . . .
"On this account we apprehend that it is expedient for the preservation of peace and good-will that the management of his monastery should be left to the discretion of the Abbot. . . .
"Let the Prior carry out with reverence whatever shall be enjoined upon him by his Abbot, doing nothing against the Abbot's will, nor against his orders. . . ."
Mark could not be otherwise than impressed by what he read.
Ii qui sub ipsis sunt, dum adulantur partibus, eunt in perditionem. . . .
Nihil contra Abbatis voluntatem faciens. . . .
Mark looked up at the figure of St. Benedict standing in that holy group at the foot of the Cross.
Ideoque nos proevidemus expedire, propter pacis caritatisque custodiam, in Abbatis pendere arbitrio ordinationem monasterii sui. . . .
St. Benedict had more than apprehended; he had actually foreseen that the Abbot ought to manage his own monastery. It was as if centuries ago, in the cave at Subiaco, he had heard that strident voice of Brother Athanasius in this matchboarded Chapter-room, as if he had beheld Brother Dominic, while apparently he was striving to persuade his brethren to accept the Father Superior's advice, nevertheless taking sides, and thereby travelling along the road that leads toward destruction. This was the thought that paralyzed Mark's tongue when it was his turn to speak, and this was why he would not commit himself to an opinion. Afterward, his neutrality appeared to him a weak compromise, and he regretted that he had not definitely allied himself with one party or the other.
The announcement in The Dragon that the Order had been compelled to give up the Aldershot house produced a large sum of sympathetic contributions; and when the Father Superior came back just before Lent, he convened another Chapter, at which he told the Community that it was imperative to establish a priory in London before they tried to reopen any houses elsewhere. His argument was cogent, and once again there was the appearance of unanimity among the Brethren, who all approved of the proposal. It had always been the custom of Father Burrowes to preach his hardest during Lent, because during that season of self-denial he was able to raise more money than at any other time, but until now he had never failed to be at the Abbey at the beginning of Passion Week, nor to remain there until Easter was over.
The Feast of St. Benedict fell upon the Saturday before the fifth Sunday in Lent, and the Father Superior, who had travelled down from the North in order to be present, announced that he considered it would be prudent, so freely was the money flowing in, not to give up preaching this year during Passion Week and Holy Week. Naturally, he did not intend to leave the Community without a priest at such a season, and he had made arrangements with the Reverend Andrew Hett to act as chaplain until he could come back into residence himself.
Brother Raymond and Brother Augustine were particularly thrilled by the prospect of enjoying the ministrations of Andrew Hett, less perhaps because they would otherwise be debarred from their Easter duties than because they looked forward to services and ceremonies of which they felt they had been robbed by the austere Anglicanism of Brother George.
"Andrew Hett is famous," declared Brother Raymond at the pitch of exultation. "It was he who told the Bishop of Ipswich that if the Bishop made him give up Benediction he would give up singing Morning and Evening Prayer."
"That must have upset the Bishop," said Mark. "I suppose he resigned his bishopric."
"I should have thought that you, Brother Mark, would have been the last one to take the part of a bishop when he persecutes a Catholic priest!"
"I'm not taking the part of the Bishop," Mark replied. "But I think it was a silly remark for a curate to make. It merely put him in the wrong, and gave the Bishop an opportunity to score."
The Prior had questioned the policy of engaging Andrew Hett as Chaplain, even for so brief a period as a month. He argued that, inasmuch as the Bishop of Silchester had twice refused to licence him to parishes in the diocese, it would prejudice the Bishop against the Order of St. George, and might lead to his inhibiting the Father Superior later on, should an excuse present itself.
"Nonsense, my dear Brother George," said the Reverend Father. "He won't know anything about it officially, and in any case ours is a private oratory, where refusals to licence and episcopal inhibitions have no effect."
"That's not my point," argued Brother George. "My point is that any communication with a notorious ecclesiastical outlaw like this fellow Hett is liable to react unfavourably upon us. Why can't we get down somebody else? There must be a number of unemployed elderly priests who would be glad of the holiday."
"I'm afraid that I've offered Hett the job now, so let us make up our minds to be content."
Mark, who was doing secretarial work for the Reverend Father, happened to be present during this conversation, which distressed him, because it showed him that the Prior was still at variance with the Abbot, a state of affairs that was ultimately bound to be disastrous for the Community. He withdrew almost immediately on some excuse to the Superior's inner room, whence he intended to go downstairs to the Porter's Lodge until the Prior was gone. Unfortunately, the door of the inner room was locked, and before he could explain what had happened, a conversation had begun which he could not help overhearing, but which he dreaded to interrupt.
"I'm afraid, dear Brother George," the Reverend Father was saying, "I'm very much afraid that you are beginning to think I have outlived my usefulness as Superior of the Order."
"I've never suggested that," Brother George replied angrily.
"You may not have meant to give that impression, but certainly that is what you have succeeded in making me feel personally," said the Superior.
"I have been associated with you long enough to be entitled to express my opinion in private."
"In private, yes. But are you always careful only to do so in private? I'm not complaining. My only desire is the prosperity and health of the Order. Next Christmas I am ready to resign, and let the brethren elect another Superior-general."
"That's talking nonsense," said the Prior. "You know as well as I do that nobody else except you could possibly be Superior. But recently I happen to have had a better opportunity than you to criticize our Mother House, and frankly I'm not satisfied with the men we have. Few of them will be any use to us. Birinus, Anselm, Giles, Chad, Athanasius if properly suppressed, Mark, these in varying degrees, have something in them, but look at the others! Dominic, ambitious and sly, Jerome, a pompous prig, Dunstan, a nincompoop, Raymond, a milliner, Nicholas, a—well, you know what I think Nicholas is, Augustine, another nincompoop, Lawrence, still at Sunday School, and poor Simon, a clown. I've had a dozen probationers through my hands, and not one of them was as good as what we've got. I'm afraid I'm less hopeful of the future than I was in Canada."
"I notice, dear Brother George," said the Father Superior, "that you are prejudiced in favour of the brethren who follow your lead with a certain amount of enthusiasm. That is very natural. But I'm not so pessimistic about the others as you are. Perhaps you feel that I am forgetting how much the Order owes to your generosity in the past. Believe me, I have forgotten nothing. At the same time, you gave your money with your eyes open. You took your vows without being pressed. Don't you think you owe it to yourself, if not to the Order or to me personally, to go through with what you undertook? Your three vows were Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience."
There was no answer from the Prior; a moment later he shut the door behind him, and went downstairs alone. Mark came into the room at once.
"Reverend Father," he said. "I'm sorry to have to tell you that I overheard what you and the Reverend Brother were saying." He went on to explain how this had happened, and why he had not liked to make his presence known.
"You thought the Reverend Brother would not bear the mortification with as much fortitude as myself?" the Father Superior suggested with a faint smile.
It struck Mark how true this was, and he looked in astonishment at Father Burrowes, who had offered him the key to his action.
"Well, we must forget what we heard, my son," said the Father Superior. "Sit down, and let's finish off these letters."
An hour's work was done, at the end of which the Reverend Father asked Mark if his had been the blank paper when the votes were counted in Chapter, and when Mark admitted that it had been, he pressed him for the reason of his neutrality.
"I'm not sure that it oughtn't to be called indecision," said Mark. "I was personally interested in the keeping on of Aldershot, because I had worked there."
"Then why not have voted for doing so?" the Superior asked, in accents that were devoid of the least grudge against Mark for disagreeing with himself.
"I tried to get rid of my personal opinion," Mark explained. "I tried to look at the question strictly from the standpoint of the member of a community. As such I felt that the Reverend Brother was wrong to run counter to his Superior. At the same time, if you'll forgive me for saying so, I felt that you were wrong to give up Aldershot. I simply could not arrive at a decision between the two opinions."
"I do not blame you, my son, for your scrupulous cast of mind. Only beware of letting it chill your enthusiasm. Satan may avail himself of it one day, and attack your faith. Solomon was just. Our Blessed Lord, by our cowardly standards, was unjust. Remembering the Gadarene swine, the barren fig-tree, the parable of the wedding-guest without a garment, Martha and Mary. . . ."
"Martha and Mary!" interrupted Mark. "Why, that was really the point at issue. And the ointment that might have been sold for the benefit of the poor. Yes, Judas would have voted with the Reverend Brother."
"And Pontius Pilate would have remained neutral," added Father Burrowes, his blue eyes glittering with delight at the effect upon Mark of his words.
But when Mark was walking back to the Abbey down the winding drive among the hazels, he wished that he and not the Reverend Father had used that illustration. However, useless regrets for his indecision in the matter of the priory at Aldershot were soon obliterated by a new cause of division, which was the arrival of the Reverend Andrew Hett on the Vigil of the Annunciation, just in time to sing first Vespers.
It fell to Mark's lot to entertain the new chaplain that evening, because Brother Jerome who had become guest-master when Brother Anselm took his place as cellarer was in the infirmary. Mark was scarcely prepared for the kind of personality that Hett's proved to be. He had grown accustomed during his time at the Abbey to look down upon the protagonists of ecclesiastical battles, so little else did any of the guests who visited them want to discuss, so much awe was lavished upon them by Brother Raymond and Brother Augustine. It did not strike Mark that the fight at St. Agnes' might appear to the large majority of people as much a foolish squabble over trifles, a cherishing of the letter rather than the spirit of Christian worship, as the dispute between Mr. So-and-so and the Bishop of Somewhere-or-other in regard to his use of the Litany of the Saints in solemn procession on high days and holy days.
Andrew Hett revived in Mark his admiration of the bigot, which would have been a dangerous thing to lose in one's early twenties. The chaplain was a young man of perhaps thirty-five, tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired, with a complexion of extreme pallor. His light-blue eyes were very red round the rims, and what eyebrows he possessed slanted up at a diabolic angle. His voice was harsh, high, and rasping as a guinea fowl's. When Mark brought him his supper, Hett asked him several questions about the Abbey time-table, and then said abruptly:
"The ugliness of this place must be soul-destroying."
Mark looked at the Guest-chamber with new eyes. There was such a force of assertion in Hett's tone that he could not contradict him, and indeed it certainly was ugly.
"Nobody can live with matchboarded walls and ceilings and not suffer for it," Hett went on. "Why didn't you buy an old tithe barn and live in that? It's an insult to Almighty God to worship Him in such surroundings."
"This is only a beginning," Mark pointed out.
"A very bad beginning," Hett growled. "Such brutalizing ugliness would be inexcusable if you were leading an active life. But I gather that you claim to be contemplative here. I've been reading your ridiculous monthly paper The Dragon. Full of sentimental bosh about bringing back the glories of monasticism to England. Tintern was not built of tin. How can you contemplate Almighty God here? It's not possible. What Divine purpose is served by collecting men under hundreds of square feet of corrugated iron? I'm astonished at Charles Horner. I thought he knew better than to encourage this kind of abomination."
There was only one answer to make to Hett, which was that the religious life of the Community did not depend upon any externals, least of all upon its lodging; but when Mark tried to frame this answer, his lips would not utter the words. In that moment he knew that it was time for him to leave Malford and prepare himself to be a priest elsewhere, and otherwise than by what the Rector had stigmatized as the pseudo-monastic life.
Mark wondered when he had left the chaplain to his ferocious meditations what would have been the effect of that diatribe upon some of his brethren. He smiled to himself, as he sat over his solitary supper in the Refectory, to picture the various expressions he could imagine upon their faces when they came hotfoot from the Guest-chamber with the news of what manner of priest was in their midst. And while he was sipping his bowl of pea-soup, he looked up at the image of St. George and perceived that the dragon's expression bore a distinct resemblance to that of the Reverend Andrew Hett. That night it seemed to Mark, in one of those waking trances that occur like dreams between one disturbed sleep and another, that the presence of the chaplain was shaking the flimsy foundations of the Abbey with such ruthlessness that the whole structure must soon collapse.
"It's only the wind," he murmured, with that half of his mind which was awake. "March is going out like a dragon."
After Mass next day, when Mark was giving the chaplain his breakfast, the latter asked who kept the key of the tabernacle.
"Brother Birinus, I expect. He is the sacristan."
"It ought to have been given to me before Mass. Please go and ask for it," requested the chaplain.
Mark found Brother Birinus in the Sacristy, putting away the white vestments in the press. When Mark gave him the chaplain's message, Brother Birinus told him that the Reverend Brother had the key.
"What does he want the key for?" asked Brother George when Mark had repeated to him the chaplain's request.
"He probably wishes to change the Host," Mark suggested.
"There is no need to do that. And I don't believe that is the reason. I believe he wants to have Benediction. He's not going to have Benediction here."
Mark felt that it was not his place to argue with the Reverend Brother, and he merely asked him what reply he was to give to the chaplain.
"Tell him that the key of the Tabernacle is kept by me while the Reverend Father is away, and that I regret I cannot give it to him."
The priest's eyes blazed with anger when Mark returned without the key.
"Who is the Reverend Brother?" he rasped.
"Brother George."
"Yes, but what is he? Apothecary, tailor, ploughboy, what?"
"Brother George is the Prior."
"Well, please tell the Prior that I should like to speak to him instantly."
When Mark found Brother George he had already doffed his habit, and was dressed in his farmer's clothes to go working on the land.
"I'll speak to Mr. Hett before Sext. Meanwhile, you can assure him that the key of the Tabernacle is perfectly safe. I wear it round my neck."
Brother George pulled open his shirt, and showed Mark the golden key hanging from a cord.
On receiving the Prior's message, the chaplain asked for a railway time-table.
"I see there is a fast train at 10.30. Please order the trap."
"You're not going to leave us?" Mark exclaimed.
"Do you suppose, Brother Mark, that no bishop in the Establishment will receive me in his diocese because I am accustomed to give way? I should not have asked for the key of the Tabernacle unless I thought that it was my duty to ask for it. I cannot take it from the Reverend Brother's neck. I will not stay here without its being given up to me. Please order the trap in time to catch the 10.30 train."
"Surely you will see the Reverend Brother first," Mark urged. "I should have made it clear to you that he is out in the fields, and that all the work of the farm falls upon his shoulders. It cannot make any difference whether you have the key now or before Sext. And I'm sure the Reverend Brother will see your point of view when you put it to him."
"I am not going to argue about the custody of God," said the chaplain. "I should consider such an argument blasphemy, and I consider the Prior's action in refusing to give up the key sacrilege. Please order the trap."
"But if you sent a telegram to the Reverend Father . . . Brother Dominic will know where he is . . . I'm sure that the Reverend Father will put it right with Brother George, and that he will at once give you the key."
"I was summoned here as a priest," said the chaplain. "If the amateur monk left in charge of this monastery does not understand the prerogatives of my priesthood, I am not concerned to teach him except directly."
"Well, will you wait until I've found the Reverend Brother and told him that you intend to leave us unless he gives you the key?" Mark begged, in despair at the prospect of what the chaplain's departure would mean to a Community already too much divided against itself.
"It is not one of my prerogatives to threaten the prior of a monastery, even if he is an amateur," said the chaplain. "From the moment that Brother George refuses to recognize my position, I cease to hold that position. Please order the trap."
"You won't have to leave till half-past nine," said Mark, who had made up his mind to wrestle with Brother George on his own initiative, and if possible to persuade him to surrender the key to the chaplain of his own accord. With this object he hurried out, to find Brother George ploughing that stony ground by the fir-trees. He was looking ruefully at a broken share when Mark approached him.
"Two since I started," he commented.
But he was breaking more precious things than shares, thought Mark, if he could but understand.
"Let the fellow go," said Brother George coldly, when Mark had related his interview with the chaplain.
"But, Reverend Brother, if he goes we shall have no priest for Easter."
"We shall be better off with no priest than with a fellow like that."
"Reverend Brother," said Mark miserably, "I have no right to remonstrate with you, I know. But I must say something. You are making a mistake. You will break up the Community. I am not speaking on my own account now, because I have already made up my mind to leave, and get ordained. But the others! They're not all strong like you. They really are not. If they feel that they have been deprived of their Easter Communion by you . . . and have you the right to deprive them? After all, Father Hett has reason on his side. He is entitled to keep the key of the Tabernacle. If he wishes to hold Benediction, you can forbid him, or at least you can forbid the brethren to attend. But the key of the Tabernacle belongs to him, if he says Mass there. Please forgive me for speaking like this, but I love you and respect you, and I cannot bear to see you put yourself in the wrong."
The Prior patted Mark on the shoulder.
"Cheer up, Brother," he said. "You mustn't mind if I think that I know better than you what is good for the Community. I have had a longer time to learn, you must remember. And so you're going to leave us?"
"Yes, but I don't want to talk about that now," Mark said.
"Nor do I," said Brother George. "I want to get on with my ploughing."
Mark saw that it was as useless to argue with him as attempt to persuade the chaplain to stay. He turned sadly away, and walked back with heavy steps towards the Abbey. Overhead, the larks, rising and falling upon their fountains of song, seemed to mock the way men worshipped Almighty God.