The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

Opposite the air-barge where the watcher sat, perhaps a hundred yards away, floated the royal boat, between a pair of warships, one blaze of scarlet, blue, and gold, flapping out the Royal Standard of England, and flashing the glass of the stern-cabin as the great creature rocked gently now and again in the breeze; and upon its deck rose up the canopy where the king and his consort sat together, and the line of scarlet guards visible behind. On the warships on either side the crew waited, the ship itself dressed as for a review, every man motionless at his post, with the crash of brass sounding from the lower decks. And so down the line the eye of the watcher went again and again, fascinated by the beauty and the glory, down past where the great ducal barges hung, each in order, past the officers of state, past the Parliament barges, down to where the boats, in numbers beyond all reckoning, faded away into the haze.

To those who looked across to where the man himself sat the sight must have been no less amazing. For he sat there, in his new dress of Cardinal's scarlet, on the throne of ceremony beneath his canopy with his attendants about him, on a wide deck laid down with scarlet, its prow crowned by the silver cross—a silent watching figure, with a splendour of romance about him more suggestive even than the material glory that showed his newly won dignity.

There was not a soul there in those astounding crowds, whether among those who, hanging here between heaven and earth, awaited for the ceremonial reception, the coming of him who was Vicar of one and Lord of the other, or even among those incalculable multitudes beneath, who packed the streets, crowded the flat roofs and looked from every window. It was this man, they knew, this tiny red figure, sitting solitary and motionless, who scarcely three months before had stood before the revolutionary Council of Berlin, of his own will and choice—who had gone there and faced what seemed a certain death, for love of the old man whose body now lay beneath the high-altar of the tremendous cathedral beneath, and to whose office and honours he had succeeded, and for the sake of the message he had carried. It was this man, alone of the whole Christian world, who after looking into the face of death, not for himself only, but for one who was dearer to him and to that Christian world than life itself, had seen in one moment the last storm roll away from human history for ever; who had seen with his own eyes, Christ in His Vicar—Princeps gloriosus come at last—take the power and reign.

He too was conscious of all this, at least subconsciously, as he sat motionless, a figure carved in ivory, a man who had found peace at last. Here, in the contemplating brain, as with his eyes he looked over the vast city of London, enormous and exquisite beyond the dreams of either the reformers or the artists of a century ago, seen as through the crystal of the summer air, as he lifted his eyes now and again to the solemn barges opposite with all that that dignity meant; above all as he looked down that immeasurable line, that roadway of a god, along which presently at least the Vicar of a God should come—all this and a thousand memories more—memories of events such as few experience in a lifetime, crowded into twelve months—passed in endless defile, coherent and consistent at last under the pointing finger of Him who had directed and evolved them all.

* * * * *

First, then, he saw himself, a child in knowledge, beginning life at a point where many leave it off, plunged into a world that was wholly strange and bewildering, a world which, though Christian in name, seemed brutal in nature—brutal as the pagan empires were brutal, yet without the excuse of their ignorance and passion.

Yet his intellect had seemed unable to refute the conclusion of that march of events, that coherence of all ideals in a reasoned whole, that fulfilment of instincts, that play of forces, upon which, as upon a tide, Catholicism had floated to final victory in the history of mankind. Not one element had seemed wanting; and, as if to convince by sensible visions that brain which shrank from merely argued logic, one by one he had seen for himself as in a picture lesson, how at Versailles the social tangle of an individual kingdom had once more submitted to monarchy—that faulty mirror of the Divine government of the world; how at Rome the stability of rival kingdoms, had found itself once more in an arbiter whose kingdom was not of this world; how finally, at Lourdes, in the widest circle of all, the very science of the world itself had found itself not confronted or opposed, but welcomed and transcended, by a school of thinkers whose limitations lay only in the Infinite.

Once more then he had returned. Yet he had found that the head and the imagination are not all; that man has a heart as well; and that this has its demands no less inexorable that those of intellect. And it was this heart of his that had seemed outraged and silenced. For he had found in Christianity a synthesis of ideas—a coincidence of knowledge—which, while satisfying that head, emerged in a system to which his heart could be no party. He had learned that "Christian society must protect itself"; and he had seemed in this to find a denial of the essential Christian doctrine that success comes only by defeat, and triumph by the Cross. It had seemed to him that Christ had accepted the taunts at last, had come down from the Cross and won the homage only of those who did not understand Him. He had been quieted indeed for a time, under the power of men who, whatever the rest of the world might do, still thought that suffering was the better part. Yet he had been quieted; not convinced.

Then he had sought a glimpse of the reverse of the picture—of that which now seemed the sole alternative to that faith which he feared—a glimpse only; yet full of significance. For he had seen men to whom the better part of themselves seemed nothing; men who walked with downcast eyes, piling mud and stones together, and fancying the heap to be a very City of God.

Then, swift as grace itself, had come his answer.