Then shame covered him, for in his recent meditations and apprehensions had he not come very near turning traitor, and being, in imagination at all events, subtly unfaithful to that same large kindly comfortable wife?
CHAPTER XXII
Two months had passed, and February was about to give place to March—two months empty of outward event for Dominic Iglesias, but big with thought and consolidation of purpose. He had been more than ever solitary during this period, for his acquaintance, even to the faithful George Lovegrove, stood aloof. But Dominic hardly noticed this. Though solitary, he had not been lonely, since his mind was absorbed in question, in pursuit, in the consciousness of deepening conviction. For the recognition not merely of religion, but of Christianity, as a supreme factor in earthly existence, which had come to him in the dreary December twilight, as, broken in health and in spirit, he gazed upon the carven picture of Calvary, had proved no fugitive experience. It remained by him, entracing his imagination and satisfying both his heart and his intelligence; so that he looked back upon the hour of his despair thankfully, seeing in it the starting-point of a journey the prosecution of which promised not only to be the main occupation of his remaining years here in time, but, the river of death once crossed, to stretch onward and onward through realms, at present inconceivable, of beauty, of knowledge, and of love. And so, for the moment, solitude was sweet to him, leaving him free of petty cares and anxieties—he moving forward, ignorant of the gossip which in point of fact surrounded him, innocent of the feminine plots and counterplots of which his blameless bachelorhood was at once the provoking cause and the object; while in his eyes—though of this, too, he was ignorant—dwelt increasingly reflection of that mysterious and lovely light which, let obstinately purblind man deny it as he may, lies forever along the far horizon, for comfort of godly wayfarers and as beacon of the elect.
Yet it must not be supposed that the outset of Iglesias' spiritual journey was wholly serene, free from obstacle or hesitation, from risk of untoward selection, or rejection, of the safe way. Many roads, and those bristling with contradictory signposts, presented themselves. Noisy touts, each crying up his own special mode and means of conveyance, rushed forth at every turn.
Modern Protestantism, as he encountered it in the pages of popular newspapers and magazines, at Mrs. Porcher's dinner-table, or in the good Lovegroves' drawing-room, had small attraction for him, since it appeared to advance chiefly by negations stated with rather blatant self-sufficiency and self-conceit. It might tend to the making of respectable municipal councillors; but, in his opinion, it was idle to pretend that it tended to the making of saints—and for the saints, those experts in the divine science, Iglesias confessed a weakness. Of spirituality it showed, to his seeing, as little outward evidence as of philosophy or of art. The phrases of piety might still be upon the lips of its votaries; but the attitude and aspirations engendered by piety were unfortunately dead. Its system of ethics was frankly utilitarian. Its goal, though hidden from the simple by a maze of high-sounding sentiment, was Rationalism pure and simple. Its god was not the creator of the visible universe, of angels and archangels, dominions, principalities, and powers, of incalculable natural and supernatural forces, but a jerky loose-jointed pasteboard divinity, the exclusive possession, since it is the exclusive invention, of the Anglo-Saxon race, through whose gaping mouth any and every self-elected prophet was free to shout, as heaven-descended truth, in the name of progress and liberty, whatever political or social catchword chanced to be the fashion of the hour.
Nor did the neo-mystics, whose utterances are also sown broadcast in contemporary literature and who are so lavish with their offers of divine enlightenment, please Iglesias any better. For his mind, thanks to his Latin ancestry, was of the logical order, while a business training and long knowledge of affairs had taught him the value of method, giving him an unalterable reverence for fact, and impressing upon him the existence of law, absolute and immutable, in every department of nature and of human activity—law, to break which is to destroy the sequence of cause and effect, and so procure abortion. Therefore this new school of thinkers—if one can dignify by the name of thinkers persons of so vague and topsy-turvy a mental habit—nourishing themselves upon the windy meat of secular and time-exploded fallacies, upon the temple-sweepings of all the religions, oriental and occidental, old and new, combined with ill-attested marvels of modern physical and psychological experiment, were far from commending themselves to his calm and patient judgment. Such excited persons, as a slight acquaintance with history proves beyond all question, have existed in every age; and, suffering from chronic mental dyspepsia, have ever been liable to mistake the rumblings of internal flatulence for the Witness of the Spirit. In their current pronouncements Iglesias met with a wearisome passion for paradox, and an equally wearisome disposition to hail all eccentricity as genius, all hysteria as inspiration. While in their exaltation of the "sub-conscious self"—namely, of those blind movements of instinct and foreboding common to the lower animals and to savage or degenerate man alike—as against the intellect and the reasoned action of the will, he saw a menace to human attainment, to civilisation—in the best meaning of that word—to right reason and noble living, which it would be difficult to overestimate. These good people, while pouring contempt on the body, and even denying its existence, in point of fact thought and talked about little else. All of which struck him as not only very tiresome and very silly, but very dangerous. Modern Protestantism might eventuate in Rationalism, in a limiting of human endeavour exclusively to the end of material well-being. But this worship of the pseudo-sciences, this tinkering at the accepted foundations and accepted decencies of the social order, this cultivation of intellectual and moral chaos, could, for the vast majority of its professors at all events, eventuate only in the mad-house. And to the mad-house, whether by twentieth-century esoteric airship or occult subway, Dominic Iglesias had not the very smallest desire to go.
For he had no ambition to be "on time" and up-to-date, to electrify either himself or his contemporaries by an exhibition of mental smartness. He merely desired, earnestly yet humbly, to be given grace to find the road—however archaic in the eyes of the modern world that road might be—which leads to the light on the far horizon and beyond to the presence of God. The more he meditated on these things the more inconceivable it became to him but that this road veritably existed; and that, not by labour of man, but by everlasting ordinance of God. It was absurd, in face of a state of being so complex, so highly organised, so universally subjected to law, as the one in which he found himself, that a matter of such supreme importance as the channel of intercourse between the soul and its Maker should have been left to haphazard accident or blundering of lucky chance. And so, having supplemented his researches in print, by listening to the discourses of many teachers, from one end of London to the other in lecture-hall, chapel, and church, having even stood among the crowds which gather around itinerant preachers in the Park, Dominic found his thought fixing itself with deepening assurance upon the communion in which he had been born and baptised, which his father, in the interests of the revolutionary propaganda, had so bitterly repudiated, and from which his mother, broken by the tyranny of circumstance and bodily weakness, had lapsed.
Outside that communion he beheld only weltering seas of prejudice and conflicting opinion, heard only the tumult of confused and acrimonious contest. Within he beheld the calm of fearlessly wielded authority and of loyal obedience; heard the awed silence of those who worship being glad. For the Catholic Church, as Iglesias began to understand, is something far greater than any triumphant example of that which can be attained by cooperation and organisation. It is not an organisation, but an organism; a Living Being, perfectly proportioned, with inherent powers of development and growth; ever-existent in the Divine Mind before Time was; recipient and guardian of the deepest secrets, the most sacred mysteries of existence; endlessly adaptable to changing conditions yet immutably the same. Hence it is that Catholicism presents no questionable historic pedigree and speaks with no uncertain voice. Claiming not only to know the road the soul must tread would it reach the far horizon, but to be the appointed warden of that same road and sustainer of it, she points with proud confidence to the vast multitude which, under her guidance, has joyfully trodden it—a multitude as diverse in gifts and estate, as in age and race—as proof of the authenticity of her mission to the toiling and sorrowful children of men.
Yet, since unconditional surrender must ever strike a pretty shrewd blow at the roots both of personal pride and worldly caution, Dominic Iglesias hesitated to take the final step and declare himself. To one who has long lived outside the creeds, and that not ungodly, still less bestially, it is no light matter to subject attitude of mind and daily habit to distinct rule. Not only does the natural man rebel against the apparent limiting of his personal freedom, but the conventional and sophisticated man fears lest agreement should, after all, spell weakness, while indifferentism—specially in outward observances—argues strength. A certain shyness, moreover, withheld Iglesias, a not unadmirable dread of being guilty of ostentation. It was so little his custom to obtrude himself, his opinions, and his needs upon the attention of others, that he was scrupulous and diffident in the selection of time and place. The affair, however, decided itself, as affairs usually do when the intention of those undertaking them is a sincere one—and thus.