Where There is Nothing Part 13

_Jerome._ It was only a dream. Come with me. You will forget it when you have had food and rest.

_Paul Ruttledge._ [_Looking at his arm._] It was there one of them clawed me; one that looked at me with great heavy eyes.

_Jerome._ The Superior has been here; try and listen to me. He says you must not preach.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Great heavy eyes and hard sharp claws.

_Jerome._ [_Putting his hands on his shoulders._] You must awake from this. You must remember where you are. You are under rules. You must not break the rules you are under. The brothers will be coming in to hear you, you must not speak to them. The Superior has forbidden it.

_Paul Ruttledge._ [_Touching_ JEROME'S _hand_.] I have always been a great trouble to you.

_Jerome._ You must go and submit to the Superior. Go and make your submission now, for my sake. Think of what I have done for your sake.

Remember how I brought you in, and answered for you when you came here.

I did not tell about that wild business. I have done penance for that deceit.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, you have always been good to me, but do not ask me this. I have had other orders.

_Jerome._ Last time you preached the whole monastery was upset. The Friars began to laugh suddenly in the middle of the night.

_Paul Ruttledge._ If I have been given certain truths to tell, I must tell them at once before they slip away from me.

_Jerome._ I cannot understand your ideas; you tell them impossible things. Things that are against the order of nature.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I have learned that one needs a religion so wholly supernatural, that is so opposed to the order of nature that the world can never capture it.

[_Some_ Friars _come in. They carry green branches in their hands_.

_Paul Ruttledge._ They are coming. Will you stay and listen?

_Jerome._ I must not stay. I must not listen.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Help me over to the candles. I am weak, my knees are weak. I shall be strong when the words come. I shall be able to teach.

[_He lights a taper at the hanging lamp and tries to light the candles with a shaking hand. JEROME takes the taper from him and lights the candles._] Why are you crying, Jerome?

_Jerome._ Because we that were friends are separated now. We shall never be together again.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Never again? The love of G.o.d is a very terrible thing.

_Jerome._ I have done with meddling. I must leave you to authority now.

I must tell the Superior you will not obey. [_He goes out._

_First Friar._ Father Jerome had a very dark look going out.

_Second Friar._ He was shut up with the Superior this morning. I wonder what they were talking about.

_First Friar._ I wonder if the Superior will mind our taking the branches. They are only cut on Palm Sunday other years. What will he tell us, I wonder? It seems as if he was going to tell us how to do some great thing. Do you think he will teach us to do cures like the friars used at Esker?

_Second Friar._ Those were great cures they did there, and they were not strange men, but just the same as ourselves. I heard of a man went to them dying on a cart, and he walked twenty miles home to Burren holding the horses head.

_First Friar._ Maybe we'll be able to see visions the same as were seen at Knock. It's a great wonder all that was seen and all that was done there.

_Third Friar._ I was there one time, and the whole place was full of crutches that had been thrown away by people that were cured. There was a silver crutch there some rich man from America had sent as an offering after getting his cure. Speak to him, Brother Colman. He seems to be in some sort of a dream. Ask if he is going to speak to us now.

_Colman._ We are all here, Brother Paul.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Have you all been through your meditations? [_They all gather round him._

_Bartley._ We have all tried; we have done our best; but it is hard to keep our mind on the one thing for long.

_Paul Ruttledge._ "He ascended into heaven." Have you meditated upon that? Did you reject all earthly images that came into your mind till the light began to gather?

_Third Friar._ I could not fix my mind well. When I put out one thought others came rus.h.i.+ng in.

_Colman._ When I was meditating, the inside of my head suddenly became all on fire.

_Aloysius._ While I was meditating I felt a spout of fire going up between my shoulders.

_Paul Ruttledge._ That is the way it begins. You are ready now to hear the truth. Now I can give you the message that has come to me. Stand here at either side of the altar. Brother Colman, come beside me here.

Lay down your palm branches before this altar; you have brought them as a sign that the walls are beginning to be broken up, that we are going back to the joy of the green earth. [_Goes up to the candles and speaks._] Et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est. For a long time after their making men and women wandered here and there, half blind from the drunkenness of Eternity; they had not yet forgotten that the green Earth was the Love of G.o.d, and that all Life was the Will of G.o.d, and so they wept and laughed and hated according to the impulse of their hearts. [_He takes up the green boughs and presses them to his breast._]

They gathered the green Earth to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and their lips, as I gather these boughs to mine, in what they believed would be an eternal kiss. [_He remains a little while silent._

_Second Friar._ I see a light about his head.

_Third Friar._ I wonder if he has seen G.o.d.

_Paul Ruttledge._ It was then that the temptation began. Not only the Serpent who goes upon his belly, but all the animal spirits that have loved things better than life, came out of their holes and began to whisper. The men and women listened to them, and because when they had lived according to the joyful Will of G.o.d in mother wit and natural kindness, they sometimes did one another an injury, they thought that it would be better to be safe than to be blessed, they made the Laws. The Laws were the first sin. They were the first mouthful of the apple, the moment man had made them he began to die; we must put out the Laws as I put out this candle.

[_He puts out the candle with an extinguisher, still holding the boughs with his left hand. Two orthodox Friars have come in._

_First Orthodox Friar._ You had better go for the Superior.

_Second Orthodox Friar._ I must stop and listen.

[_The First Orthodox Friar listens for a minute or two and then goes out._

_Paul Ruttledge._ And when they had lived amidst the green Earth that is the Love of G.o.d, they were sometimes wetted by the rain, and sometimes cold and hungry, and sometimes alone from one another; they thought it would be better to be comfortable than to be blessed. They began to build big houses and big towns. They grew wealthy and they sat chattering at their doors; and the embrace that was to have been eternal ended, lips and hands were parted. [_He lets the boughs slip out of his arms._] We must put out the towns as I put out this candle.

[_Puts out another candle._

_A Friar._ Yes, yes, we must uproot the towns.

_Paul Ruttledge._ But that is not all, for man created a worse thing, yes, a worse defiance against G.o.d. [_The_ Friars _groan_.] G.o.d put holiness into everything that lives, for everything that desires is full of His Will, and everything that is beautiful is full of His Love; but man grew timid because it had been hard to find his way amongst so much holiness, and though G.o.d had made all time holy, man said that only the day on which G.o.d rested from life was holy, and though G.o.d had made all places holy, man said, "no place but this place that I put pillars and walls about is holy, this place where I rest from life"; and in this and like ways he built up the Church. We must destroy the Church, we must put it out as I put out this candle. [_Puts out another candle._

_Friars._ [_Clasping one another's hands._] He is right, he is right.

The Church must be destroyed. [_The_ SUPERIOR _comes in_.

_First Friar._ Here is the Superior.

_A Friar._ He has been saying----