The Dawn of All Part 3

"Well, just talk to him vaguely. I'll sit opposite and take care that you don't make any mistakes. Just talk to him generally.

Talk about the sermon in Hyde Park, and the Abbey. He won't expect you to talk politics publicly."

"I'll try."

The car drew up as the conversation ended; and the man who had lost his memory glanced out. To his intense relief, he recognized where he was. It was the door of Archbishop's House, in Ambrosden Avenue; and beyond he perceived the long northern side of the Cathedral.

"I know this," he said.

"Of course you do, my dear Monsignor," said the priest rea.s.suringly. "Now follow me: bow to any one who salutes you; but don't speak a word."

They pa.s.sed in together through the door, past a couple of liveried servants who held it open, up the staircase and beyond up the further flight. The old priest drew out a key and unlocked the door before them; and together they turned to the left up the corridor, and pa.s.sed into a large, pleasant room looking out on to the street, with a further door communicating, it seemed, with a bedroom beyond. Fortunately they had met no one on the way.

"Here we are," said Father Jervis cheerfully. "Now, Monsignor, do you know where you are?"

The other shook his head dolorously.

"Come, come; this is your own room. Look at your writing-table, Monsignor; where you sit every day."

The other looked at it eagerly and yet vaguely. A half-written letter, certainly in his own handwriting, lay there on the blotting-pad, but the name of his correspondent meant nothing to him; nor did the few words which he read. He looked round the room--at the bookcases, the curtains, the _prie-Dieu_ . . . And again terror seized him.

"I know nothing, father . . . nothing at all. It's all new! For G.o.d's sake! . . ."

"Quietly then, Monsignor. It's all perfectly right. . . . Now I'm going to leave you for ten minutes, to arrange about the places at lunch. You'd better lock your door and admit no one. Just look round the rooms when I'm gone----Ah!"

Father Jervis broke off suddenly and darted at an arm-chair, where a book lay face downwards on the seat. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the book, glanced at the pages, looked at the t.i.tle, and laughed aloud.

"I knew it," he said; "I was certain of it. You've got hold of Manners' History, Look! you're at the very page."

He held it up for the other to see. Monsignor looked at it, still only half comprehending, and just noticing that the paper had a peculiar look, and saw that the running dates at the top of the pages contained the years 1904-1912. The priest shook the book in gentle triumph. A sheet of paper fell out of it, which he picked up and glanced at. Then he laughed again.

"See," he said, "you've been making notes of the very period--no doubt in order to be able to talk to Manners. That's the time he knows more about than any living soul. He calls it the 'crest of the wave,' you know. Everything dated from then, in his opinion."

"I don't understand a word----"

"See here, Monsignor," interrupted the priest in mild glee, "here's a subject to talk about at lunch. Just get Manners on to it, and you'll have no trouble. He loves lecturing; and he talks just like a history-book. Tell him you've been reading his History and want a bird's-eye view."

Monsignor started.

"Why, yes," he said, "and that'll tell me the facts, too."

"Excellent. Now, Monsignor, I must go. Just look round the rooms well, and get to know where things are kept. I'll be back in ten minutes, and we'll have a good talk before lunch as to all who'll be there. It'll all go perfectly smoothly, I promise you."

(IV)

When the door closed Monsignor Masterman looked round him slowly and carefully. He had an idea that the mist must break sooner or later and that all would become familiar once again. It was perfectly plain, by now, to his mind, what had happened to him; and the fact that there were certain things which he recognized, such as the Cathedral, and Hyde Park, and a friar's habit, and Archbishop's House--all this helped him to keep his head. If he remembered so much, there seemed no intrinsic reason why he should not remember more.

But his inspection was disappointing. Not only was there not one article in the room which he knew, but he did not even understand the use of some of the things which he saw. There was a row of what looked like small black boxes fastened to the right-hand wall, about the height of a man's head; and there was some kind of a machine, all wheels and handles, in the corner by the nearer window, which was completely mysterious to him.

He glanced through into the bedroom, and this was not much better. Certainly there was a bed; there was no mistake about that; and there seemed to be wardrobes sunk to the level of the walls on all sides; but although in this room he thought he recognized the use of everything which he saw, there was no single thing that wore a familiar aspect.

He came back to his writing-table and sat down before it in despair. But that did not rea.s.sure him. He took out one or two of the books that stood there in a row--directories and address-books they appeared chiefly to be--and found his name written in each, with here and there a note or a correction, all in his own handwriting. He took up the half-written letter again and glanced through it once more, but it brought no relief. He could not even conjecture how the interrupted sentence on the third page ought to end.

Again and again he tried to tear up from his inner consciousness something which he could remember, closing his eyes and sinking his head upon his hands, but nothing except fragments and glimpses of vision rose before him. It was now a face or a scene to which he could give no name; now a sentence or a thought that owned no context. There was no frame at all--no unified scheme in which these fragments found cohesion. It was like regarding the pieces of a shattered jar whose shape even could not be conjectured. . . .

Then a sudden thought struck him; he sprang up quickly and ran into his bedroom. A tall mirror, he remembered, hung between the windows. He ran straight up to this and stood staring at his own reflection. It was himself that he saw there--there was no doubt of that--every line and feature of that keen, pale, professorial-looking face was familiar, though it seemed to him that his hair was a little greyer than it ought to be.

CHAPTER II

(I)

"I shall be delighted, Monsignor," said the thin, clever-faced statesman, in his high, dry voice; "I shall be delighted to sketch out what seem to me the princ.i.p.al points in the century's development."

A profound silence fell upon all the table.

Really, Monsignor Masterman thought to himself, as he settled down to listen, he had done very well so far. He had noticed the old priest opposite smiling more than once, contentedly, as their eyes met.

Father Jervis had come to him as he had promised, for half an hour's good talk before lunch; and they had spent a very earnest thirty minutes together. First they had discussed with great care all the persons who would be present at lunch--not more than eight, besides themselves; the priest had given him a little plan of the table, showing where each would sit, and had described their personal appearance and recounted a salient fact or two about every one. These were all priests except Mr. Manners himself and his secretary. The rest of the time had been occupied in information being given to the man who had lost his memory, with regard to a few very ordinary subjects of conversation--the extraordinary fairness of the weather; a new opera produced with unparalleled success by a "well-known" composer of whom Monsignor had never heard; a recent Eucharistic congress in Tokio, from which the Cardinal had just returned; and the scheme for redecorating the interior of Archbishop's House.

There had not been time for more; but these subjects, under the adroit handling of Father Jervis, had proved sufficient; and up to the preconcerted moment when Monsignor had uttered the sentence about his study of Mr. Manners' _History of Twentieth Century Development_ which had drawn from the author the words recorded above, all had gone perfectly smoothly.

There had been a few minor hitches; for example, the food and the manner of serving it and the proper method of consuming it had furnished a bad moment or two; and once Monsignor had been obliged to feign sudden deafness on being asked a question on a subject of which he knew nothing by a priest whose name he had forgotten, until Father Jervis slid in adroitly and saved him.

Yet these were quite unnoticed, it appeared, and could easily be attributed to the habit of absent-mindedness for which, Monsignor Masterman was relieved to learn, he was almost notorious.

And now the crisis was past and Mr. Manners was launched.

Monsignor glanced almost happily round the tall dining-room, from which the servants had already disappeared, and, with his gla.s.s in his hand, settled himself down to listen and remember.

"The crisis, to my mind, in the religious situation," began the statesman, looking more professional than ever, with his closed eyes, thin, wrinkled face, and high forehead--"the real crisis is to be sought in the period from 1900 to 1920.

"This was the period, you remember, of tremendous social agitation. There was the widespread revolution of the Latin countries, beginning with France and Portugal, chiefly against Authority, and most of all against Monarchy (since Monarchy is the most vivid and the most concrete embodiment of authority); and in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries against Capital and Aristocracy. It was in these years that Socialism came most near to dominating the civilized world; and, indeed, you will remember that for long after that date it did dominate civilization in certain places.

"Now the real trouble at the bottom of all this was the state in which Religion found itself. And you will find, gentlemen," said the quasi-lecturer in parenthesis, glancing round the attentive faces, "that Religion always is and always has been at the root of every world-movement. In fact it must be so. The deepest instinct in man is his religion, that is, his att.i.tude to eternal issues; and on that att.i.tude must depend his relation to temporal things. This is so, largely, even in the case of the individual; it must therefore be infinitely more so in large bodies or nations; since every crowd is moved by principles that are the least common multiple of the principles of the units which compose it. Of course this is universally recognized now; but it was not always so. There was a time, particularly at this period of which I am now speaking, when men attempted to treat Religion as if it were one department of life, instead of being the whole foundation of every and all life. To treat it so is, of course, to proclaim oneself as fundamentally irreligious--and, indeed, very ignorant and uneducated.

"To resume, however:

"Religion at this period was at a very strange crisis. That it could possibly be treated in the way I have mentioned shows how very deeply irreligion had spread. There is no such thing, of course, really as Irreligion--except by a purely conventional use of the word: the 'irreligious' man is one who has made up his mind either that there is no future world, or that it is so remote, as regards effectivity, as to have no bearing upon this. And that is a religion--at least it is a dogmatic creed--as much as any other.

"The causes of this state of affairs I take to have been as follows:

"Religion up to the Reformation had been a matter of authority, as it is again now; but the enormous development of various sciences and the wide spread of popular 'knowledge' had, in the first flush, distracted attention from that which is now, in all civilized countries, simply an axiom of thought, viz., that a Revelation of G.o.d must be embodied in a living authority safeguarded by G.o.d. Further, at that time science and exact knowledge generally had not reached the point which they reached a little later--of corroborating in particular after particular, so far as they are capable of doing so, the Revelation of G.o.d known as Catholicism; and of knowing their limitations where they cannot. Many sciences, at this time, had gone no further than to establish certain facts which appeared, to the very imperfectly educated persons of that period, to challenge and even to refute certain facts or deductions of Revelation. Psychology, for example, strange as it now appears in our own day, actually seemed to afford other explanations of the Universe than that of Revelation. (We will discuss details presently.) Social Science, at that time, too, moved in the direction of Democracy and even Socialism. I know it appears monstrous, and indeed almost incredible, that men who really had some claim to be called educated seriously maintained that the most stable and the most reasonable method of government lay in the extension of the franchise--that is, in reversing the whole eternal and logical order of things, and permitting the inexpert to rule the expert, and the uneducated and the ill-informed to control by their votes--that is, by sheer weight of numbers--the educated and the well-informed. Yet such was the case. And the result was--since all these matters act and react--that the idea of authority from above in matters of religion was thought to be as 'undemocratic'