The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

He began to walk up and down after a while, marvelling, trying to reconstruct his ideas once more, and to take in the astonishing system and organization whose signs were so evident about him. Certainly it was thorough and efficient. There must be countless institutions—hospitals, retreat-houses, cloisters, besides all the offices and business centres necessary for carrying on this tremendous work; and yet practically no indication of any movement or bustle made itself apparent. So far as solitude was concerned, he might be imprisoned in a dead city. And all this deepened his impressions of peace and recuperation. The silence, through his knowledge, was alive to him. There must be, almost within sound of a shout, hundreds of living persons like himself, yet all intent, in some form or another, upon that same overwhelming silence in which facts could be received and relations readjusted.

Yet even this, as he reflected upon it, had certain elements of terror. Here again, under another disguise, was the force that he had feared in London—the force that had sent Dom Adrian noiselessly out of life, that proposed to deal with refractory instincts in human nature—such as manifested themselves in Socialism—as a householder might deal with a plague of mice, drastically and irresistibly; the force that moved the wheels and drove the soundless engines of that tremendous social-religious machine of which he too was a part. It was here too then; it was this that had closed him in here for three days in his tiny domicile in this great dumb city; it was this that held the whole under an invisible discipline; it was this that had looked at him out of the hawk's-eyes, and spoken to him through the colourless lips of the monk who had given him his instructions this morning. . . .

Once more then his individuality began to reassert itself, and to attempt to cast off the spell even of this peace that promised relief. He became aware of an extraordinary loneliness of soul, an isolation in the deepest regions of his soul from all others. The rest of the world, it seemed, had an understanding about these matters. Father Jervis and the Carthusian no doubt had talked him over; they accepted as an established and self-evident philosophy this universal unity and authority; they regarded himself, who could not yet so accept it, as a spiritual, if not an actual mental invalid. . . . He had been brought here to be treated. . . . Well, he would hold his own.

And then another mood came on him—a temptation, as it seemed to him then, to fling personal responsibility overboard; to accept this tremendous claim of authority to control even the thoughts of the heart. Surely peace lay this way. To submit to this crowned and sceptred Christ; to reject for ever the other—this meant relief and sanity. . . .

He walked more and more quickly and abruptly up and down the little tiled space. He was conscious of a conflict all confused with dust and smoke. He began to hesitate as to which was the higher, even which was the tolerable course—to sink his individuality, to throw up his hands and drown, or to assert that individuality openly and defiantly, and to take the consequences.

(V)

He awoke the next morning after a troubled night, conscious instantly of a sense of crisis. In one way or another, it seemed, he would have to come to a decision. The monk would be with him in less than an hour.

He dressed as before and breakfasted. Then, as the monk did not come, he went out to the tribune to pray and to prepare himself.

Ten minutes later the door opened quietly, and the lay-brother who had attended on him bowed to him as he turned, in sign that he was to come.

The monk was standing by the fireplace as he came in; he bowed very slightly. Then the two sat down.