(VII)

It was on the last morning of their stay at Thurles that Monsignor had an opportunity of seeing something of the real character of the place.

The lay monk came to him again, as he was finishing breakfast, and abruptly suggested it.

"I shall be very happy," said Monsignor.

Certainly his stay had done him good in some indefinable manner which he could not altogether understand. Each morning he had talked; but there was no particular argument which he could recall that had convinced him. Indeed, the monk had told him more than once that bare intellectual argument could do nothing except clear the ground of actual fallacies. Certainly the points had been put to him clearly and logically. He perceived now that, so far as reason was concerned, Christian society could not do otherwise than silence those who attacked the very foundations of its existence; and he also understood that this was completely another matter from the charge that men had been accustomed to bring against the Church, that she "would persecute if she had the power." For it was not the Church in any sense that used repression; it was the State that did so; and as Dom Adrian had pointed out, this was of the very essence of all civil government. But this was not new to him. Rather his stay in Thurles had, by quieting his nervous system, made it possible for him to elect to follow his reason rather than his feelings. His feelings were as before. Still in the bottom of his consciousness he felt that the Christ which he had known was other than the Christ who now reigned on earth. But now he had been enabled to make the decision over which he had previously hesitated; he had sufficiently recovered at least so far as to go back to his work and to do what seemed to be the duty to which his reason pointed, and in action at least to ignore his feelings. This much had been done. He did not yet understand by what means.

A car waited in the little court to which the two came down. The monk beckoned him to enter, and they moved off.

"This quarter of the monastery," began the monk abruptly, "is entirely of the nature you have seen. It is composed of flats and apartments throughout, for the simple retreats, such as your own.

Each Father who is employed in this kind of work has his round of visits to make each day."

"How many monks are there altogether, Father, in Thurles?"

"About nine thousand."

". . I beg your pardon?"

"About nine thousand. Of these about six thousand live a purely Contemplative Life. No monk undertakes any work of this kind until he has been professed at least fifteen years. But the regulations are too intricate to explain just now."

"Where are we going first----"

"Stay, Monsignor" (the monk interrupted him by a hand on his arm). "We are just entering the northern quarter. It is the serious cases that are dealt with here."

"Serious?"

"Yes; where there is a complete breakdown of mental powers. That building there is the first of the block of the gravest cases of all--real mania."

Monsignor leaned forward to look.

They were pa.s.sing noiselessly along the side of a great square; but there was nothing to distinguish the building indicated from the rest. It just stood there, a tall pile of white stone; and the top of a campanile rose above it.

"You have worked there, Father?"

"I worked there for two years," said the monk tranquilly. "It is distressing work at first. Would you care to look in?"

Monsignor shook his head.

"Yes, it is distressing work, but there are great consolations.

Two out of every three cases at least are cured, and we have a certain number of vocations from the patients."

"Vocations!"

"Certainly. Mania in the majority of cases is nothing else than possession. In fact some authorities are inclined to say that it is exceptional to find it otherwise. And in the other cases it is generally the force of an exceptionally strong will that has lost its balance, and is powerful enough to disregard all ordinary checks of reason and common sense and human emotion. Well, a character like that is capable of a good deal. Each case is, of course, completely isolated in this department as in all others.

It is incredible to think that less than a hundred years ago such patients were herded together. The system now, of course, is to surround them with completely healthy conditions and completely self-restrained attendants. That gradually rebuilds the physical and nervous conditions, and exorcism is not administered until there is sufficient reserve force for the patient partly, at any rate, to cooperate."

Monsignor was silent. Again he felt bewilderment at the amazing simplicity and common sense of it all.

"I am taking you," said the monk presently, "to the central quarter--to the monastery proper. It is there that the main body of the monks live. The church is remarkable. It is the third largest monastic church in the world. . . . We are just entering the quarter now," he added.

Monsignor leaned forward as the air darkened, and was in time to see the great gates swinging slowly together again as if to meet after the car had pa.s.sed. It was still twilight as they sped on, and he perceived that they were pa.s.sing, with that extreme and noiseless swiftness with which they had come, up some kind of tunnel lit by artificial light. Then again there was a rush of daylight and the car stopped.

"We must go on foot here," said the monk, and opened the door.

The priest, still marvelling, stepped out after him, and followed through a postern door; and then, as he emerged, understood more or less the arrangement of the buildings.

He stood on the edge of an enormous courtyard, perhaps five hundred yards across. This was laid down with a lawn, crossed in every direction with paved paths. But that at which he chiefly stared was a church whose like he had never set eyes on before.

It was the sanctuary end, obviously, that faced him; the farther end ran back into the high walls, pierced here and there by low doors, with which the court was surrounded. The church itself rose perhaps two hundred feet from floor to roof. It was straight from end to end, the line broken only by a tall, severe tower at the point where it joined the wall of the court; and running round it, jutting out in a continuous block, like a platform, was a low building, plainly containing chapels. The whole was of white stone, unrelieved by carving of any kind. Enormous narrow lancet windows showed above the line of chapels, springing perhaps forty feet from the ground, and rising to a line immediately below the roof. The whole gave an impression of astounding severity and equally astounding beauty. It had the kind of beauty of a perfectly bare mountain or of an iceberg. It was graceful and yet as strong as iron; it was cold, and yet obviously alive.

"Yes," said the monk, as they went across the court, "It is impressive, is it not? It is the monastic church proper. It can hold, if necessary, ten thousand monks. But you will see when we look in.

"The court we are now in is surrounded by cloisters. There are just nine thousand cells; there are, perhaps, fifty unoccupied now. Each cell, as you know, is a little house in itself, with three or four rooms and a garden; so we need s.p.a.ce. The cemeteries are beyond the cloisters. We bury, as you know, in the bare earth without a coffin."

It was like the creation of a dream, thought the priest as he walked with his guide, listening to the quiet talk. He had seen some of these facts in the book that Father Jervis had lent him; but they had meant little to him. Now he began to understand, and once more a kind of inexplicable terror began to affect him.

But as, five minutes later, he stood in the high western gallery of the church, and saw that enormous place stretching beyond calculation to where thin clear gla.s.s sanctuary windows rose in a group, like sword-blades, above the white pavement before the altar; as he saw the ranks of stalls running up, tier above tier, and understood that, all told, they numbered ten thousand, one third of them on this side of the screen, in the lay brothers' choir, and two thirds beyond; as he imagined what it must be to watch this congregation of elect souls stream in, each with his lantern in his hand, through the countless doors that ended each little narrow gangway that disappeared among the stalls; as he pictured the thunder of the unemotional Carthusian plain-song--as he saw all this with his bodily eyes standing silent beside the silent monk, and began little by little to take in what it all meant, and what this world must be in which such a condition of things was accepted--a world where Contemplatives at last were honoured as the kings of the earth, and themselves controlled and soothed the lives of whom the world had despaired; as his imagination ran out still farther, and he remembered that this was but one of innumerable houses of the kind--as he began to be aware of all this, and of what it signified as regards the civilization in which he found himself--his terror began to pa.s.s, and to give place to an awe, and to a kind of exaltation, such as neither Rome nor Lourdes nor London had been able even to suggest. . . .

(VIII)

"Well?" said Father Jervis, smiling, as the two met on the platform that evening, to wait for the English-bound air-ship.

Monsignor looked at him.

"I am glad I came," he said. "No; it is not all well with me, even yet. But I will try again."

The other nodded, still smiling.

"Who was the Father who looked after me?" added the prelate. "He said he had talked with you."

"He is considered one of the best they have," said the other "I asked for him specially. He hardly ever fails. You are impressed by him?"

"Oh yes . . . but he did nothing particular."

"That is just it," smiled the old priest. He added after a pause, as the bell rang--

"You feel ready for work again? You know what lies before you?"

Monsignor nodded slowly.