He read a certain number of books; and it will be remembered that he had followed, with a good deal of intelligence, Campion’s arguments. Anthony was no theologian, and therefore missed perhaps the deep, subtle arguments; but he had a normal mind, and was able to appreciate and remember some salient points.
For example, he was impressed greatly by the negative character of Protestantism in such books as Nicholl’s “Pilgrimage.” In this work a man was held up as a type to be imitated whose whole religion to all appearances consisted of holding the Pope to be Antichrist, and his Church the synagogue of Satan, of disliking the doctrines of merit and of justification by works, of denying the Real Presence, and of holding nothing but what could be proved to his own satisfaction by the Scriptures.
Then he read as much as he could of the great Jewell controversy. This Bishop of Salisbury, who had, however, recanted his Protestant opinions under Mary, and resumed them under Elizabeth, had published in 1562 his “Apology of the Church of England,” a work of vast research and learning. Mr. Harding, who had also had the advantage of having been on both sides, had answered it; and then the battle was arrayed. It was of course mostly above Anthony’s head; but he gained from what he was able to read of it a very fair estimate of the conflicting theses, though he probably could not have stated them intelligibly. He also made acquaintance with another writer against Jewell,—Rastall; and with one or two of Mr. Willet’s books, the author of “Synopsis Papismi” and “Tretrastylon Papisticum.”
Even more than by paper controversy, however, he was influenced by history that was so rapidly forming before his eyes. The fact and the significance of the supremacy of the Queen in religion was impressed upon him more vividly by her suspension of Grindal than by all the books he ever read: here was the first ecclesiastic of the realm, a devout, humble and earnest man, restrained from exercising his great qualities as ruler and shepherd of his people, by a woman whose religious character certainly commanded no one’s respect, even if her moral life were free from scandal; and that, not because the Archbishop had been guilty of any crime or heresy, or was obviously unfitted for his post, but because his conscientious judgment on a point of Church discipline and liberty differed from hers; and this state of things was made possible not by an usurpation of power, but by the deliberately ordered system of the Church of England. Anthony had at least sufficient penetration to see that this, as a fundamental principle of religion, however obscured it might be by subsequent developments, was yet fraught with dangers compared with which those of papal interference were comparatively trifling—dangers that is, not so much to earthly peace and prosperity, as to the whole spiritual nature of the nation’s Christianity.
Yet another argument had begun to suggest itself, bearing upon the same point, of the relative advantages and dangers of Nationalism. When he had first entered the Archbishop’s service he had been inspired by the thought that the Church would share in the rising splendour of England; now he began to wonder whether she could have strength to resist the rising worldliness that was bound to accompany it. It is scarcely likely that men on fire with success, whether military or commercial, will be patient of the restraints of religion. If the Church is independent of the nation, she can protest and denounce freely; if she is knit closely to the nation, such rebuke is almost impossible.
A conversation that Anthony had on this subject at the beginning of February helped somewhat to clear up this point.
He was astonished after dinner one day to hear that Mr. Henry Buxton was at the porter’s lodge desiring to see him, and on going out he found that it was indeed his old acquaintance, the prisoner.
“Good-day, Master Norris,” said the gentleman, with his eyes twinkling; “you see the mouse has escaped, and is come to call upon the cat.”
Anthony inquired further as to the details of his release.
“Well, you see,” said Mr. Buxton, “they grew a-weary of me. I talked so loud at them all for one thing; and then you see I was neither priest nor agent nor conspirator, but only a plain country gentleman: so they took some hundred or two pounds off me, to make me still plainer; and let me go. Now, Mr. Norris, will you come and dine with me, and resume our conversation that was so rudely interrupted by my journey last time? But then you see her Majesty would take no denial.”
“I have just dined,” said Anthony, “but——”
“Well, I will not ask you to see me dine again, as you did last time; but will you then sup with me? I am at the ‘Running Horse,’ Fleet Street, until to-morrow.”
Anthony accepted gladly; for he had been greatly taken with Mr. Buxton; and at six o’clock that evening presented himself at the “Running Horse,” and was shown up to a private parlour.
He found Mr. Buxton in the highest good-humour; he was even now on his way from Wisbeach, home again to Tonbridge, and was only staying in London to finish a little business he had.
Before supper was over, Anthony had laid his difficulties before him.
“My dear friend,” said the other, and his manner became at once sober and tender, “I thank you deeply for your confidence. After being thought midway between a knave and a fool for over a year, it is a comfort to be treated as an honest gentleman again. I hold very strongly with what you say; it is that, under God, that has kept me steady. As I said to you last time, Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world. Can you imagine, for example, Saint Peter preaching religious obedience to Nero to be a Christian’s duty? I do not say (God forbid) that her Grace is a Nero, or even a Poppæa; but there is no particular reason why some successor of hers should not be. However, Nero or not, the principle is the same. I do not deny that a National Church may be immensely powerful, may convert thousands, may number zealous and holy men among her ministers and adherents—but yet her foundation is insecure. What when the tempest of God’s searching judgments begins to blow?
“Or, to put it plainer, in a parable, you have seen, I doubt not, a gallant and his mistress together. So long as she is being wooed by him, she can command; he sighs and yearns and runs on errands—in short, she rules him. But when they are wedded—ah me! It is she—if he turns out a brute, that is—she that stands while my lord plucks off his boots—she who runs to fetch the tobacco-pipe and lights it and kneels by him. Now I hold that to wed the body spiritual to the body civil, is to wed a delicate dame to a brute. He may dress her well, give her jewels, clap her kindly on the head—but she is under him and no free woman. Ah!”—and then Mr. Buxton’s eyes began to shine as Anthony remembered they had done before, and his voice to grow solemn,—“and when the spouse is the Bride of Christ, purchased by His death, what then would be the sin to wed her to a carnal nation, who shall favour her, it may be, while she looks young and fair; but when his mood changes, or her appearance, then she is his slave and his drudge! His will and his whims are her laws; as he changes, so must she. She has to do his foul work; as she had to do for King Henry, as she is doing it now for Queen Bess; and as she will always have to do, God help her, so long as she is wedded to the nation, instead of being free as the handmaiden and spouse of Christ alone. My faith would be lost, Mr. Norris, and my heart broken quite, if I were forced to think the Church of England to be the Church of Christ.”
They talked late that evening in the private baize-curtained parlour on the third floor. Anthony produced his difficulties one by one, and Mr. Buxton did his best to deal with them. For example, Anthony remarked on the fact that there had been no breach of succession as to the edifices and endowments of the Church; that the sees had been canonically filled, and even the benefices; and that therefore, like it or not, the Church of England now was identical with the Pre-Reformation Church.
“Distinguo,” said his friend. “Of course she is the successor in one sense: what you say is very true. It is impossible to put your finger all along the line of separation. It is a serrated line. The affairs of a Church and a nation are so vast that that is sure to be so; although if you insist, I will point to the Supremacy Act of 1559 and the Uniformity Act of the same year as very clear evidences of a breach with the ancient order; in the former the governance is shifted from its original owner, the Vicar of Christ, and placed on Elizabeth; it was that that the Carthusian Fathers and Sir Thomas More and many others died sooner than allow: and the latter Act sweeps away all the ancient forms of worship in favour of a modern one. But I am not careful to insist upon those points; if you deny or disprove them,—though I do not envy any who attempts that—yet even then my principle remains, that all that to which the Church of England has succeeded is the edifices and the endowments; but that her spirit is wholly new. If a highwayman knocks me down to-morrow, strips me, clothes himself with my clothes, and rides my horse, he is certainly my successor in one sense; yet he will be rash if he presents himself to my wife and sons—though I have none, by the way—as the proper owner of my house and name.”
“But there is no knocking down in the question,” said Anthony. “The bishops and clergy, or the greater part of them, consented to the change.”
Mr. Buxton smiled.
“Very well,” he said; “yet the case is not greatly different if the gentleman threatens me with torture instead, if I do not voluntarily give him my clothes and my horse. If I were weak and yielded to him, yes, and made promises of all kinds in my cowardice—yet he would be no nearer being the true successor of my name and fortune. And if you read her Grace’s Acts, and King Henry’s too, you will find that that was precisely what took place. My dear sir,” Mr. Buxton went on, “if you will pardon my saying it, I am astounded at the effrontery of your authorities who claim that there was no breach. Your Puritans are wiser; they at least frankly say that the old was Anti-Christian; that His Holiness (God forgive me for saying it!), was an usurper: and that the new Genevan theology is the old gospel brought to light again. That I can understand; and indeed most of your churchmen think so too; and that there was a new beginning made with Protestantism. But when her Grace calls herself a Catholic, and tells the poor Frenchmen that it is the old religion here still: and your bishops, or one or two of them rather, like Cheyney, I suppose, say so too—then I am rendered dumb—(if that were possible). If it is the same, then why, a-God’s name, were the altars dragged down, and the screens burned, and the vestments and the images and the stoups and the pictures and the ornaments, all swept out? Why, a-God’s name, was the old mass blotted out and this new mingle-mangle brought in, if it be all one? And for the last time, a-God’s name, why is it death to say mass now, if it be all one? Go, go: Such talk is foolishness, and worse.”
Mr. Buxton was silent for a moment as Anthony eyed him; and then burst out again.
“Ah! but worse than all are the folks that stand with one leg on either stool. We are the old Church, say they;—standing with the Protestant leg in the air,—therefore let us have the money and the buildings: they are our right. And then when a poor Catholic says, Then let us have the old mass, and the old penance and the old images: Nay, nay, nay, they say, lifting up the Catholic leg and standing on the other, those are Popery; and we are Protestants; we have made away with all such mummery and muniments of superstition. And so they go see-sawing to and fro. When you run at one leg they rest them on the other, and you know not where to take them.”
And so the talk went on. When the evening was over, and Anthony was rising to return to Lambeth, Mr. Buxton put his hand on his arm.
“Good Mr. Norris,” he said, “you have been very patient with me. I have clacked this night like an old wife, and you have borne with me: and now I ask your pardon again. But I do pray God that He may show you light and bring you to the true Church; for there is no rest elsewhere.”
Anthony thanked him for his good wishes.
“Indeed,” he said, too, “I am grateful for all that you have said. You have shown me light, I think, on some things, and I ask your prayers.”
“I go to Stanfield to-morrow,” said Mr. Buxton; “it is a pleasant house, though its master says so, not far from Sir Philip Sidney’s: if you would but come and see me there!”
“I am getting greatly perplexed,” said Anthony, “and I think that in good faith I cannot stay long with the Archbishop; and if I leave him how gladly will I come to you for a few days; but it must not be till then.”
“Ah! if you would but make the Spiritual Exercises in my house; I will provide a conductor; and there is nothing that would resolve your doubts so quickly.”
Anthony was interested in this; and asked further details as to what these were.
“It is too late,” said Mr. Buxton, “to tell you to-night. I will write from Stanfield.”
Mr. Buxton came downstairs with Anthony to see him on to his horse, and they parted with much good-will; and Anthony rode home with a heavy and perplexed heart to Lambeth.
He spent a few days more pondering; and then determined to lay his difficulties before the Archbishop; and resign his position if Grindal thought it well.
He asked for an interview, and the Archbishop appointed an hour in the afternoon at which he would see him in Cranmer’s parlour, the room above the vestry which formed part of the tower that Archbishop Cranmer had added to Lambeth House.
Anthony, walking up and down in the little tiled cloisters by the creek, a few minutes before the hour fixed, heard organ-music rolling out of the chapel windows; and went in to see who was playing. He came in through the vestry, and looking to the west end gallery saw there the back of old Dr. Tallis, seated at the little positive organ that the late Archbishop had left in his chapel, and which the present Archbishop had gladly retained, for he was a great patron of music, and befriended many musicians when they needed help—Dr. Tallis, as well as Byrd, Morley and Tye. There were a few persons in the chapel listening, the Reverend Mr. Wilson, one of the chaplains, being among them; and Anthony thought that he could not do better than sit here a little and quiet his thoughts, which were nervous and distracted at the prospect of his coming interview. He heard voices from overhead, which showed that the Archbishop was engaged; so he spoke to an usher stationed in the vestry, telling him that he was ready as soon as the Archbishop could receive him, and that he would wait in the chapel; and then made his way down to one of the return stalls at the west end, against the screen, and took his seat there.
This February afternoon was growing dark, and the only lights in the chapel were those in the organ loft; but there was still enough daylight outside to make the windows visible—those famous windows of Morton’s, which, like those in King’s Chapel, Cambridge, combined and interpreted the Old and New Testaments by an ingenious system of types and antitypes, in the manner of the “Biblia Pauperum.” There was then only a single subject in each light; and Anthony let his eyes wander musingly to and fro in the east window from the central figure of the Crucified to the types on either side, especially to a touching group of the unconscious Isaac carrying the wood for his own death, as Christ His Cross. Beneath, instead of the old stately altar glowing with stuffs and precious metals and jewels which had once been the heart of this beautiful shrine, there stood now a plain solid wooden table that the Archbishop used for the Communion. Anthony looked at it, and sighed a little to himself. Did the altar and the table then mean the same thing?
Meanwhile the glorious music was rolling overhead in the high vaulted roof. The old man was extemporising; but his manner was evident even in that; there was a simple solemn phrase that formed his theme, and round this adorning and enriching it moved the grave chords. On and on travelled the melody, like the flow of a broad river; now sliding steadily through a smiling land of simple harmonies, where dwelt a people of plain tastes and solid virtues; now passing over shallows where the sun glanced and played in the brown water among the stones, as light arpeggio chords rippled up and vanished round about the melody; now entering a land of mighty stones and caverns where the echoes rang hollow and resonant, as the counterpoint began to rumble and trip like boulders far down out of sight, in subaqueous gloom; now rolling out again and widening, fuller and deeper as it went, moving in great masses towards the edge of the cataract that lies like a line across the landscape: it is inevitable now, the crash must come;—a chord or two pausing,—pausing;—and then the crash, stupendous and sonorous.
Then on again through elaborate cities where the wits and courtiers dwell, and stately palaces slide past upon the banks, and barges move upon its breast, on to the sea—that final full close that embraces and engulfs all music, all effort, all doubts and questionings, whether in art or theology, all life of intellect, heart or will—that fathomless eternal deep from which all comes and to which all returns, that men call the Love of God.
Anthony stirred in his seat; he had been here ten minutes, proposing to take his restless thoughts in hand and quiet them; and, lo! it had been done for him by the master who sat overhead. Here he, for the moment, remained, ready for anything—glad to take up the wood and bear it to the Mount of Sacrifice—content to be carried on in that river of God’s Will to the repose of God’s Heart—content to dwell meantime in the echoing caverns of doubt—in the glancing shadows and lights of an active life—in his own simple sunlit life in the country—or even to plunge over the cataract down into the fierce tormented pools in the dark—for after all the sea lay beyond; and he who commits himself to the river is bound to reach it.
He heard a step, and the usher stood by him.
“His Grace is ready, Master Norris.”
Anthony rose and followed him.
The Archbishop received him with the greatest kindness. As Anthony came in he half rose, peering with his half-blind eyes, and smiling and holding out his hands.
“Come, Master Norris,” he said, “you are always welcome. Sit down;” and he placed him in a chair at the table close by his own.
“Now, what is it?” he said kindly; for the old man’s heart was a little anxious at this formal interview that had been requested by this favourite young officer of his.
Then Anthony, without any reserve, told him all; tracing out the long tale of doubt by landmarks that he remembered; mentioning the effect produced on his mind by the Queen’s suspension of the Archbishop, especially dwelling on the arrest, the examination and the death of Campion, that had made such a profound impression upon him; upon his own reading and trains of thought, and the conversations with Mr. Buxton, though of course he did not mention his name; he ended by saying that he had little doubt that sooner or later he would be compelled to leave the communion of the Church of England for that of Rome; and by placing his resignation in the Archbishop’s hands, with many expressions of gratitude for the unceasing kindness and consideration that he had always received at his hands.
There was silence when he had finished. A sliding panel in the wall near the chapel had been pushed back, and the mellow music of Dr. Tallis pealed softly in, giving a sweet and melodious background, scarcely perceived consciously by either of them, and yet probably mellowing and softening their modes of expression during the whole of the interview.
“Mr. Norris,” said the Archbishop at last, “I first thank you for the generous confidence you have shown towards me: and I shall put myself under a further obligation to you by accepting your resignation: and this I do for both our sakes. For yours, because, as you confess, this action of the Queen’s—(I neither condemn nor excuse it myself)—this action has influenced your thoughts: therefore you had best be removed from it to a place where you can judge more quietly. And I accept it for my own sake too; for several reasons that I need not trouble you with. But in doing this, I desire you, Mr. Norris, to continue to draw your salary until Midsummer:—nay, nay, you must let me have my say. You are at liberty to withdraw as soon as you have wound up your arrangements with Mr. Somerdine; he will now, as Yeoman of the Horse, have your duties as well as his own; for I do not intend to have another Gentleman of the Horse. As regards an increase of salary for him, that can wait until I see him myself. In any case, Mr. Norris, I think you had better withdraw before Mid-Lent Sunday.
“And now for your trouble. I know very well that I cannot be of much service to you. I am no controversialist. But I must bear my witness. This Papist with whom you have had talk seems a very plausible fellow. His arguments sound very plain and good; and yet I think you could prove anything by them. They seem to me like that openwork embroidery such as you see on Communion linen sometimes, in which the pattern is formed by withdrawing certain threads. He has cleverly omitted just those points that would ruin his argument; and he has made a pretty design. But any skilful advocate could make any other design by the same methods. He has not thought fit to deal with such words of our Saviour as what He says on Tradition; with what the Scriptures say against the worshipping of angels; with what St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Colossians, in the second chapter, concerning all those carnal ordinances which were done away by Christ, but which have been restored by the Pope in his despite; he does not deal with those terrible words concerning the man of sin and the mystery of iniquity. In fact, he takes just one word that Christ let fall about His Kingdom, and builds this great edifice upon it. You might retort to him in a thousand ways such as these. Bishop Jewell, in his book, as you know, deals with these questions and many more; far more fully than it is possible for you and me even to dream of doing. Nay, Mr. Norris; the only argument I can lay before you is this. There are difficulties and troubles everywhere; that there are such in the Church of England, who would care to deny? that there are equally such, aye, and far more, in the Church of Rome, who would care to deny, either? Meanwhile, the Providence of God has set you here and not there. Whatever your difficulties are here, are not of your choosing; but if you fly there (and I pray God you will not) there they will be. Be content, Master Norris; indeed you have a goodly heritage; be content with it; lest losing that you lose all.”
Anthony was greatly touched by this moderate and courteous line that the Archbishop was taking. He knew well in his heart that the Church of Rome was, in the eyes of this old man, a false and deceitful body, for whom there was really nothing to be said. Grindal, in his travels abroad during the Marian troubles, had been deeply attracted by the Genevan theology, with whose professors he had never wholly lost touch; and Anthony guessed what an effort it was costing him, and what a strain it was on his conscience, thus to combine courtesy with faithfulness to what he believed to be true.
Grindal apparently feared he had sacrificed his convictions, for he presently added: “You know, Mr. Norris, that I think very much worse of Papistry than I have expressed; but I have refrained because I think that would not help you; and I desire to do that more than to relieve myself.”
Anthony thanked him for his gentleness; saying that he quite understood his motives in speaking as he had done, and was deeply obliged to him for it.
The Archbishop, however, as indeed were most of the English Divines of the time, was far more deeply versed in destructive than constructive theology; and, to Anthony’s regret, was presently beginning in that direction.
“It is beyond my imagination, Mr. Norris,” he said, “that any who have known the simple Gospel should return to the darkness. See here,” he went on, rising, and fumbling among his books, “I have somewhere here what they call an Indulgence.”
He searched for a few minutes, and presently shook out of the leaves of Jewell’s book a paper which he peered at, and then pushed over to Anthony.
It was a little rectangular paper, some four or five inches long; bearing a figure of Christ, wounded, with His hands bound together before Him, and the Cross with the superscription rising behind. In compartments on either side were instruments of the Passion, the spear, and the reed with the sponge, with other figures and emblems. Anthony spelt out the inscription.
“Read it aloud, Mr. Norris,” said the Archbishop.
“‘To them,’” read Anthony, “‘that before this image of pity devoutly say five paternosters, five aves and a credo, piteously beholding these arms of Christ’s Passion, are granted thirty-two thousand seven hundred and fifty-five years of pardon.’”
“Now, Mr. Norris,” said the Archbishop, “have you considered that it is to that kind of religion that you are attracted? I will not comment on it; there is no need.”
“Your Grace,” said Anthony slowly, laying the paper down, “I need not say, I think, that this kind of thing is deeply distasteful to me too. Your Grace cannot dislike it more than I do. But then I do not understand it; I do not know what indulgences mean; I only know that were they as mad and foolish as we Protestants think them, no truthful or good man could remain a Papist for a day; but then there are many thoughtful and good men Papists; and I conclude from that that what we think the indulgences to be, cannot be what they really are. There must be some other explanation.
“And again, my lord, may I add this? If I were a Turk I should find many things in the Christian religion quite as repellent to me; for example, how can it be just, I should ask, that the death of an innocent man, such as Christ was, should be my salvation? How, again, is it just that faith should save? Surely one who has sinned greatly ought to do something towards his forgiveness, and not merely trust to another. But you, my lord, would tell me that there are explanations of these difficulties, and of many more too, of which I should gradually understand more and more after I was a Christian. Or again, it appears to me even now, Christian as I am, judging as a plain man, that predestination contradicts free-will; and no explanation can make them both reasonable. Yet, by the grace of God, I believe all these doctrines and many more, not because I understand them, for I do not; but because I believe that they are part of the Revelation of God. It is just so, too, with the Roman Catholic Church. I must not take this or that doctrine by itself; but I must make up my mind whether or no it is the one only Catholic Church, and then I shall believe all that she teaches, because she teaches it, and not because I understand it. You must forgive my dulness, my lord; but I am but a layman, and can only say what I think in simple words.”
“But we must judge of a Christian body by what that body teaches,” said the Archbishop. “On what other grounds are you drawn to the Papists, except by what they teach?”
“Yes, your Grace,” said Anthony, “I do judge of the general body of doctrine, and of the effect upon the soul as a whole; but that is not the same as taking each small part, and making all hang upon that.”
“Well, Mr. Norris,” said the Archbishop, “I do not think we can talk much more now. It is new to me that these difficulties are upon you. But I entreat you to talk to me again as often as you will; and to others also—Dr. Redmayn, Mr. Chambers and others will be happy if they can be of any service to you in these matters: for few things indeed would grieve me more than that you should turn Papist.”
Anthony thanked the Archbishop very cordially for his kindness, and, after receiving his blessing, left his presence. He had two or three more talks with him before he left, but his difficulties were in no way resolved. The Archbishop had an essentially Puritan mind, and could not enter into Anthony’s point of view at all. It may be roughly said that from Grindal’s standpoint all turned on the position and responsibility of the individual towards the body to which he belonged: and that Anthony rather looked at the corporate side first and the individual second. Grindal considered, for example, the details of the Catholic religion in reference to the individual, asking whether he could accept this or that: Anthony’s tendency was rather to consider the general question first, and to take the difficulties in his stride afterwards. Anthony also had interviews with the Archdeacon and chaplain whom Grindal had recommended; but these were of even less service to him, as Dr. Redmayn was so frankly contemptuous, and Mr. Chambers so ignorant, of the Romish religion that Anthony felt he could not trust their judgment at all.
In the meanwhile, during this last fortnight of Anthony’s Lambeth life, he received a letter from Mr. Buxton, explaining what were the Spiritual Exercises to which he had referred, and entreating Anthony to come and stay with him at Stanfield.
“Now come, dear Mr. Norris,” he wrote, “as soon as you leave the Archbishop’s service; I will place three or four rooms at your disposal, if you wish for quiet; for I have more rooms than I know what to do with; and you shall make the Exercises if you will with some good priest. They are a wonderful method of meditation and prayer, designed by Ignatius Loyola (one day doubtless to be declared saint), for the bringing about a resolution of all doubts and scruples, and so clearing the eye of the soul that she discerns God’s Will, and so strengthening her that she gladly embraces it. And that surely is what you need just now in your perplexity.”
The letter went on to describe briefly the method followed, and ended by entreating him again to come and see him. Anthony answered this by telling him of his resignation of his post at Lambeth, and accepting his invitation; and he arranged to spend the last three weeks before Easter at Stanfield, and to go down there immediately upon leaving Lambeth. He determined not to go to Great Keynes first, or to see Isabel, lest his resolution should be weakened. Already, he thought, his motives were sufficiently mixed and perverted without his further aggravating their earthly constituents.
He wrote to his sister, however, telling her of his decision to leave Lambeth; and adding that he was going to stay with a friend until Easter, when he hoped to return to the Dower House, and take up his abode there for the present. He received what he thought a very strange letter in return, written apparently under excitement strongly restrained. He read in it a very real affection for himself, but a certain reserve in it too, and even something of compassion; and there was a sentence in it that above all others astonished him.
“J. M. has been here, and is now gone to Douai. Oh! dear brother, some time no doubt you will tell us all. I feel so certain that there is much to explain.”
Had she then guessed his part in the priest’s release? Anthony wondered; but at any rate he knew, after his promise to the Queen, that he must not give her any clue. He was also surprised to hear that James had been to Great Keynes. He had inquired for him at the Tower on the Monday after his visit to Greenwich, and had heard that Mr. Maxwell was already gone out of England. He had not then troubled to write again, as he had no doubt but that his message to Lady Maxwell, which he had sent in his note to Isabel, had reached her; and that certainly she, and probably James too, now knew that he had been an entirely unconscious and innocent instrument in the priest’s arrest. But that note, as has been seen, never reached its destination. Lady Maxwell did not care to write to the betrayer of her son; and Isabel on the one hand hoped and believed now that there was some explanation, but on the other did not wish to ask for it again, since her first request had been met by silence.
As the last days of his life at Lambeth were coming to an end, Anthony began to send off his belongings on pack-horses to Great Keynes; and by the time that the Saturday before Mid-Lent Sunday arrived, on which he was to leave, all had gone except his own couple of horses and the bags containing his personal luggage.
His last interview with the Archbishop affected him very greatly.
He found the old man waiting for him, walking up and down Cranmer’s parlour in an empty part of the room, where there was no danger of his falling. He peered anxiously at Anthony as he entered.
“Mr. Norris,” he said, “you are greatly on my mind. I fear I have not done my duty to you. My God has taken away the great charge he called me to years ago, to see if I were fit or not for the smaller charge of mine own household, and not even that have I ruled well.”
Anthony was deeply moved.
“My lord,” he said, “if I may speak plainly to you, I would say that to my mind the strongest argument for the Church of England is that she brings forth piety and goodness such as I have seen here. If it were not for that, I should no longer be perplexed.”
Grindal held up a deprecating hand.
“Do not speak so, Mr. Norris. That grieves me. However, I beseech you to forgive me for all my remissness towards you, and I wish to tell you that, whatever happens, you shall never cease to have an old man’s prayers. You have been a good and courteous servant to me always—more than that, you have been my loving friend—I might almost say my son: and that, in a world that has cast me off and forgotten me, I shall not easily forget. God bless you, my dear son, and give you His light and grace.”
When Anthony rode out of the gateway half an hour later, with his servant and luggage behind him, it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could keep from tears as he thought of the blind old man, living in loneliness and undeserved disgrace, whom he was leaving behind him.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
Anthony found that Mr. Buxton had seriously underestimated himself in describing his position as that of a plain country gentleman. Stanfield was one of the most beautiful houses that he had ever seen. On the day after his arrival, his host took him all over the house, at his earnest request, and told him its story; and as they passed from room to room, again and again Anthony found himself involuntarily exclaiming at the new and extraordinary beauties of architecture and furniture that revealed themselves.
The house itself had been all built in the present reign, before its owner had got into trouble; and had been fitted throughout on the most lavish scale, with furniture of German as well as of English manufacture. Mr. Buxton was a collector of pictures and other objects of art; and his house contained some of the very finest specimens of painting, bronzes, enamels, plate and woodwork procurable from the Continent.
The house was divided into two sections; the chief living rooms were in a long suite looking to the south on to the gardens, with a corridor on the north side running the whole length of the house on the ground-floor, from which a staircase rose to a similar corridor or gallery on the first floor. The second section of the house was a block of some half-dozen smallish rooms, with a private staircase of their own, and a private entrance and little walled garden as well in front. The house was mostly panelled throughout, and here and there hung pieces of magnificent tapestry and cloth of arras. All was kept, too, with a care that was unusual in those days—the finest woodwork was brought to a high polish, as well as all the brass utensils and steel fire-plates and dogs and such things. No two rooms were alike; each possessed some marked characteristic of its own—one bedroom, for example, was distinguished by its fourpost bed with its paintings on the canopy and head—another, by its little two-light high window with Adam and Eve in stained glass; another with a little square-window containing a crucifix, which was generally concealed by a sliding panel; another by two secret cupboards over the fire-place, and its recess fitted as an oratory; another by a magnificent piece of tapestry representing Saint Clara and Saint Thomas of Aquin, each holding a monstrance, with a third great monstrance in the centre, supported by angels.
Downstairs the rooms were on the same scale of magnificence. The drawing-room had an exquisite wooden ceiling with great pendants elaborately carved; the dining-room was distinguished by its glass, containing a collection of coats-of-arms of many of Mr. Buxton’s friends who had paid him visits; the hall by its vast fire-place and the tapestries that hung round it.
The exterior premises were scarcely less remarkable; a fine row of stables, and kennels where greyhounds were kept, stood to the north and the east of the house; but the wonder of the country was the gardens to the south. Anthony hardly knew what to say for admiration as he went slowly through these with his host, on the bright spring morning, after visiting the house. These were elaborately laid out, and under Mr. Buxton’s personal direction, for he was one of the few people in England at this time who really understood or cared for the art. His avenue of small clipped limes running down the main walk of the garden, his yew-hedges fashioned with battlements and towers; his great garden house with its vane; his fantastic dial in the fashion of a tall striped pole surmounted by a dragon;—these were the astonishment of visitors; and it was freely said that had not Mr. Buxton been exceedingly adroit he would have paid the penalty of his magnificence and originality by being forced to receive a royal visit—a favour that would have gone far to impoverish, if not to ruin him. The chancel of the parish-church overlooked the west end of his lime-avenue, while the east end of the garden terminated in a great gateway, of stone posts and wrought iron gates that looked out to the meadows and farm buildings of the estate, and up to which some day no doubt a broad carriage drive would be laid down. But at present the sweep of the meadows was unbroken.
It was to this beautiful place that Anthony found himself welcomed. His host took him at once on the evening of his arrival to the west block, and showed him his bedroom—that with the little cupboards and the oratory recess; and then, taking him downstairs again, showed him a charming little oak parlour, which he told him would be altogether at his private service.
“And you see,” added Mr. Buxton, “in this walled garden in front you can have complete privacy, and thus can take the air without ever coming to the rest of the house; to which there is this one entrance on the ground floor.” And then he showed him how the lower end of the long corridor communicated with the block.
“The only partners of this west block,” he added, “will be the two priests—Mr. Blake, my chaplain, and Mr. Robert, who is staying with me a week or two; and who, I hope, will conduct you through the Exercises, as he is very familiar with them. You will meet them both at supper: of course they will be both dressed as laymen. The Protestants blamed poor Campion for that, you know; but had he not gone in disguise, they would only have hanged him all the sooner. I like not hypocrisy.”
Anthony was greatly impressed by Father Robert when he met him at supper. He was a tall and big man, who seemed about forty years of age, with a long square-jawed face, a pointed beard and moustache, and shrewd penetrating eyes. He seemed to be a man in advance of his time; he was full of reforms and schemes that seemed to Anthony remarkably to the point; and they were reforms too quite apart from ecclesiasticism, but rather such as would be classed in our days under the title of Christian Socialism.
For example, he showed a great sympathy for the condition of the poor and outcast and criminals; and had a number of very practical schemes for their benefit.
“Two things,” he said, in answer to a question of Anthony’s, “I would do to-morrow if I had the power. First I would allow of long leases for fifty and a hundred years. Everywhere the soil is becoming impoverished; each man squeezes out of it as much as he can, and troubles not to feed the land or to care for it beyond his time. Long leases, I hold, would remedy this. It would encourage the farmer to look before him and think of his sons and his sons’ sons. And second, I would establish banks for poor men. There is many a man now a-begging who would be living still in his own house, if there had been some honest man whom he could have trusted to keep his money for him, and, maybe, give him something for the loan of it: for in these days, when there is so much enterprise, money has become, as it were, a living thing that grows; or at the least a tool that can be used; and therefore, when it is lent, it is right that the borrower should pay a little for it. This is not the same as the usury that Holy Church so rightly condemns: at least, I hold not, though some, I know, differ from me.”
After supper the talk turned on education: here, too, the priest had his views.
“But you are weary of hearing me!” he said, in smiling apology. “You will think me a schoolmaster.”
“And I pray you to consider me your pupil,” said Mr. Buxton. The priest made a little deprecating gesture.
“First, then,” he said, “I would have a great increase of grammar schools. It is grievous to think of England as she will be when this generation grows up: the schooling was not much before; but now she has lost first the schools that were kept by Religious, and now the teaching that the chantry-priests used to give. But this perhaps may turn to advantage; for when the Catholic Religion is re-established in these realms, she will find how sad her condition is; and, I hope, will remedy it by a better state of things than before—first, by a great number of grammar schools where the lads can be well taught for small fees, and where many scholarships will be endowed; and then, so great will be the increase of learning, as I hope, that we shall need to have a third university, to which I should join a third Archbishoprick, for the greater dignity of both; and all this I should set in the north somewhere, Durham or Newcastle, maybe.”
He spoke, too, with a good deal of shrewdness of the increase of highway robbery, and the remedies for it; remarking that, although in other respects the laws were too severe, in this matter their administration was too lax; since robbers of gentle birth could generally rely on pardon. He spoke of the Holy Brotherhood in Spain (with which country he seemed familiar), and its good results in the putting down of violence.
Anthony grew more and more impressed by this man’s practical sense and ability; but less drawn to him in consequence as his spiritual guide. He fancied that true spirituality could scarcely exist in this intensely practical nature. When supper was over, and the priests had gone back to their rooms, and his host and he were seated before a wide blazing hearth in Mr. Buxton’s own little room downstairs, he hinted something of the sort. Mr. Buxton laughed outright.
“My dear friend,” he said, “you do not know these Jesuits (for of course you have guessed that he is one); their training and efficiency is beyond all imagining. In a week from now you will be considering how ever Father Robert can have the heart to eat his dinner or say ‘good-day’ with such a spiritual vision and insight as he has. You need not fear. Like the angel in the Revelation, he will call you up to heaven, hale you to the abyss and show you things to come. And, though you may not believe it, it is the man’s intense and simple piety that makes him so clear-sighted and practical; he lives so close to God that God’s works and methods, so perplexing to you and me, are plain to him.”
They went on talking together for a while. Mr. Buxton said that Father Robert had thought it best for Anthony not to enter Retreat until the Monday evening; by which time he could have sufficiently familiarised himself with his new surroundings, so as not to find them a distraction during his spiritual treatment. Anthony agreed to this. Then they talked of all kinds of things. His host told him of his neighbours; and explained how it was that he enjoyed such liberty as he did.
“You noticed the church, Mr. Norris, did you not, at your arrival, overlooking the garden? It is a great advantage to me to have it so close. I can sit in my own garden and hear the Genevan thunders from within. He preaches so loud that I might, if I wished, hear sermons, and thus satisfy the law and his Reverence; and at the same time not go inside an heretical meeting-house, and thus satisfy my own conscience and His Holiness. But I fear that would not have saved me, had I not the ear of his Reverence. I will tell you how it was. When the laws began to be enforced hereabouts, his Reverence came to see me; and sat in that very chair that you now occupy.
“‘I hear,’ said he, cocking his eye at me, ‘that her Grace is becoming strict, and more careful for the souls of her subjects.’
“I agreed with him, and said I had heard as much.
“‘The fine is twenty pounds a month,’ says he, ‘for recusancy,’ and then he looks at me again.”
“At first I did not catch his meaning; for, as you have noticed, Mr. Norris, I am but a dull man in dealing with these sharp and subtle Protestants: and then all at once it flashed across me.
“‘Yes, your Reverence,’ I said, ‘and it will be the end of poor gentlemen like me, unless some kind friend has pity on them. How happy I am in having you!’ I said, ‘I have never yet shown my appreciation as I should: and I propose now to give you, to be applied to what purposes you will, whether the sustenance of the minister or anything else, the sum of ten pounds a month; so long as I am not troubled by the Council. Of course, if I should be fined by the Council, I shall have to drop my appreciation for six months or so.’
“Well, Mr. Norris, you will hardly believe it, but the old doctor opened his mouth and gulped and rolled his eyes, like a trout taking a fly; and I was never troubled until fifteen months ago, when they got at me in spite of him. But he has lost, you see, a matter of one hundred and fifty pounds while I have been at Wisbeach; and I shall not begin to appreciate him again for another six months; so I do not think I shall be troubled again.”
Anthony was amazed, and said so.
“Well,” said the other, “I was astonished too; and should never have dreamt of appreciating him in such a manner unless he had proposed it. I had a little difficulty with Mr. Blake, who told me that it was alibellum, and that I should be ashamed to pay hush money. But I told him that he might call it what he pleased, but that I would sooner pay ten pounds a month and be in peace, than twenty pounds a month and be perpetually harassed: and Father Robert agrees with me, and so the other is content now.”
The next day, which was Sunday, passed quietly. Mass was no doubt said somewhere in the house; though Anthony saw no signs of it. He himself attended the reverend doctor’s ministrations in the morning; and found him to be what he had been led to expect.
In the afternoon he walked up and down the lime avenue with Father Robert, while the evening prayer and sermon rumbled forth through the broken chancel window; and they talked of the Retreat and the arrangements.
“You no doubt think, Mr. Norris,” said the priest, “that I shall preach at you in this Retreat, and endeavour to force you into the Catholic Church; but I shall do nothing of the kind. The whole object of the Exercises is to clear away the false motives that darken the soul; to place the Figure of our Redeemer before the soul as her dear and adorable Lover and King; and then to kindle and inspire the soul to choose her course through the grace of God, for the only true final motive of all perfect action,—that is, the pure Love of God. Of course I believe, with the consent of my whole being, that the Catholic Church is in the right; but I shall not for a moment attempt to compel you to accept her. The final choice, as indeed the Retreat too, must be your free action, not mine.”
They arranged too the details of the Retreat; and Anthony was shown the little room beyond Father Robert’s bedroom, where the Exercises would be given; and informed that another gentleman who lived in the neighbourhood would come in every day for them too, but that he would have his meals separately, and that Anthony himself would have his own room and the room beneath entirely at his private disposal, as well as the little walled garden to walk in.
The next day Mr. Buxton took Anthony a long ride, to invigorate him for the Retreat that would begin after supper. Anthony learned to his astonishment and delight that Mary Corbet was a great friend of Mr. Buxton’s.
“Why, of course I know her,” he said. “I have known her since she was a tiny girl, and threw her mass-book at the minister’s face the first time he read the morning prayer. God only knows why she was so wroth with the man for differing from herself on a point that has perplexed the wisest heads: but at any rate, wroth she was, and bang went her book. I had to take her out, and she was spitting like a kitten all down the aisle when the dog puts his head into the basket.
“‘What’s that man doing here?’ she screamed out; ‘where’s the altar and the priest?’ And then at the door, as luck would have had it, she saw that Saint Christopher was gone; and she began bewailing and bemoaning him until you’d have thought he’d have been bound to come down from heaven, as he did once across the dark river, and see what in the world the crying child wanted with him.”
They came about half-way in their ride through the village of Penshurst; and on reaching the Park turned off under the beeches towards the house.
“We have not time to go in,” said Mr. Buxton, “but I hope you will see the house sometime; it is a pattern of what a house should be; and has a pattern master.”
As they came up to the Edwardine Gate-house, a pleasant-faced, quietly-dressed gentleman came riding out alone.
“Why, here he is!” said Mr. Buxton, and greeted him with great warmth, and made Anthony known to him.
“I am delighted to know Mr. Norris,” said Sidney, with that keen friendly look that was so characteristic of him. “I have heard of him from many quarters.”
He entreated them to come in; but Mr. Buxton said they had not time; but would if they might just glance into the great court. So Sidney took them through the gate-house and pointed out one or two things of interest from the entrance, the roof of the Great Hall built by Sir John de Pulteney, the rare tracery in its windows and the fine living-rooms at one side.
“I thank God for it every day,” said Sidney gravely. “I cannot imagine why He should have given it me. I hope I am not fool enough to disparage His gifts, and pretend they are nothing: indeed, I love it with all my heart. I would as soon think of calling my wife ugly or a shrew.”
“That is a good man and a gentleman,” said Mr. Buxton, as they rode away at last in the direction of Leigh after leaving Sidney to branch off towards Charket, “and I do not know why he is not a Catholic. And he is a critic and a poet, men say, too.”
“Have you read anything of his?” asked Anthony.
“Well,” said the other, “to tell the truth, I have tried to read some sheets of his that he wrote for his sister, Lady Pembroke. He calls it ‘Arcadia’; I do not know whether it is finished or ever will be. But it seemed to me wondrous dull. It was full of shepherds and swains and nymphs, who are perpetually eating collations which Phœbus or sunburnt Autumn, and the like, provides of his bounty; or any one but God Almighty; or else they are bathing and surprising one another all day long. It is all very sweet and exquisite, I know; and the Greece, where they all live and love one another, must be a very delightful country, as unlike this world as it is possible to imagine; but it wearies me. I like plain England and plain folk and plain religion and plain fare; but then I am a plain man, as I tell you so often.”
As the afternoon sun drew near setting, they came through Tonbridge.
“Now, what can a man ask more,” said Mr. Buxton, as they rode through it, “than a good town like this? It is not a great place, I know, with solemn buildings and wide streets; neither is it a glade or a dell; but it is a good clean English town; and I would not exchange it for Arcadia or Athens either.”
Stanfield lay about two miles to the west; and on their way out, Mr. Buxton talked on about the country and its joys and its usefulness.
“Over there,” he said, pointing towards Eridge, “was the first cannon made in England. I do not know if that is altogether to its credit, but it at least shows that we are not quite idle and loutish in the country. Then all about here is the iron; the very stirrups you ride in, Mr. Norris, most likely came from the ground beneath your feet; but it is sad to see all the woods cut down for the smelting of it. All these places for miles about here, and about Great Keynes too, are all named after the things of forestry and hunting. Buckhurst, Hartfield, Sevenoaks, Forest Row, and the like, all tell of the country, and will do so long after we are dead and gone.”
They reached Stanfield, rode past the green and the large piece of water there, and up the long village street, and turned into the iron gates beyond the church, just as the dusk fell.
That evening after supper the Retreat began. The conduct of the Spiritual Exercises had not reached the elaboration to which they have been perfected since; nor, in Anthony’s case, a layman and a young man, did Father Robert think fit to apply it even in all the details in which it would be used for a priest or for one far advanced in the spiritual life; but it was severe enough.
Every evening Father Robert indicated the subject of the following day’s meditation; and then after private prayer Anthony retired to his room. He rose about seven o’clock in the morning, and took a little food at eight; then shortly before nine the first meditation was given elaborately. The first examination of conscience was made at eleven; followed by dinner at half-past. From half-past twelve to half-past one Anthony rested in his room; then until three he was encouraged to walk in the garden; at three the meditation was to be recalled point by point in the chapel, followed by spiritual reading; at five o’clock supper was served; and at half-past six the meditation was repeated with tremendous emphasis and fervent acts of devotion; at half-past eight a slight collation was laid in his room; and at half-past nine the meditation for the following day was given. Father Robert in his previous talks with Anthony had given him instructions as to how to occupy his own time, to keep his thoughts fixed and so forth. He had thought it wise too not to extend the Retreat for longer than a fortnight; so that it was proposed to end it on Palm Sunday. Two or three times in the week Anthony rode out by himself; and Father Robert was always at his service, besides himself coming sometimes to talk to him when he thought the strain or the monotony was getting too heavy.
As for the Exercises themselves, the effect of them on Anthony was beyond all description. First the circumstances under which they were given were of the greatest assistance to their effectiveness. There was every aid that romance and mystery could give. Then it was in a strange and beautiful house where everything tended to caress the mind out of all self-consciousness. The little panelled room in which the exercises were given looked out over the quiet garden, and no sound penetrated there but the far-off muffled noises of the peaceful village life, the rustle of the wind in the evergreens, and the occasional coo or soft flapping flight of a pigeon from the cote in the garden. The room itself was furnished with two or three faldstools and upright wooden arm-chairs of tolerable comfort; a table was placed at the further end, on which stood a realistic Spanish crucifix with two tapers always burning before it; and a little jar of fragrant herbs. Then there was the continual sense of slight personal danger that is such a spur to refined natures; here was a Catholic house, of which every member was strictly subject to penalties, and above all one of that mysterious Society of Jesus, the very vanguard of the Catholic army, and of which every member was a picked and trained champion. Then there was the amazing enthusiasm, experience, and skill of Father Robert, as he called himself; who knew human nature as an anatomist knows the structure of the human body; to whom the bewildering tangle of motives, good, bad and indifferent, in the soul, was as plain as paths in a garden; who knew what human nature needed, what it could dispense with, what was its power of resistance; and who had at his disposal for the storming of the soul an armoury of weapons and engines, every specimen of which he had tested and wielded over and over again. Little as Anthony knew it, Father Robert, during the first two days after his arrival, had occupied himself with sounding and probing the lad’s soul, trying his intellect by questions that scarcely seemed to be so, taking the temperature of his emotional nature by tales and adroit remarks, and watching the effect of them; in short, with studying the soul who had come for his treatment as a careful doctor examines the health of a new patient before he issues his prescription. And then, lastly, there were the Exercises themselves, a mighty weapon in any hands; and all but irresistible when directed by the skill, and inspired by the enthusiasm and sincere piety of such a man as Father Robert.
The Exercises fell into three parts, each averaging in Anthony’s case about five days. First came the Purgative Exercises: the object of these was to cleanse and search out the very recesses of the soul; as fire separates gold from alloy.
As Anthony knelt in the little room before the Crucifix day by day, it seemed to him as if the old conventional limitations and motives of action and control were rolling back, revealing the realities of the spiritual world. The Exercises began with an elaborate exposition of the End of man—which may be roughly defined as the Glory of God attained through the saving and sanctifying of the individual. Every creature of God, then, that the soul encounters must be tested by this rule, How far does the use of it serve for the final end? For it must be used so far, and no farther. Here then was a diagram of the Exercises, given in miniature at the beginning.
Then the great facts that practically all men acknowledge, and upon which so few act, were brought into play. Hell, Judgment and Death in turn began to work upon the lad’s soul—these monstrous elemental Truths that underlie all things. As Father Robert’s deep vibrating voice spoke, it appeared to Anthony as if the room, the walls, the house, the world, all shrank to filmy nothingness before the appalling realities of these things. In that strange and profound “Exercise of the senses” he heard the moaning and the blasphemies of the damned, of those rebellious free wills that have enslaved themselves into eternal bondage by a deliberate rejection of God—he put out his finger and tasted the bitterness of their furious tears—the very reek of sin came to his nostrils, of that corruption that is in existence through sin; nay, he saw the very flaming hells red with man’s wrath against his Maker.
Then he traced back, under the priest’s direction, the Judgment through which every soul must pass; he saw the dead, great and small, stand before God; the books, black with blotted shame, were borne forth by the recording angels and spread before the tribunal. His ears tingled with that condemning silence of the Judge beyond Whom there is no appeal, from whose sentence there is no respite, and from whose prison there is no discharge; and rang with that pealing death-sentence at which the angels hide their faces, but to which the conscience of the criminal assents that it is just. His soul looked out at those whirling hosts on either side, that black cloud going down to despair, that radiant company hastening to rise to the Uncreated Light in whom there is no darkness at all—and cried in piteous suspense to know on which side she herself one day would be.
Then he came yet one step further back still, and told himself the story of his death. He saw the little room where he would lie, his bed in one corner; he saw Isabel beside the bed; he saw himself, white, gasping, convulsed, upon it—the shadows of the doctor and the priest were upon the wall—he heard his own quick sobbing breath, he put out his finger and touched his own forehead wet with the death-dew—he tasted and smelt the faint sickly atmosphere that hangs about a death chamber; and he watched the grey shadow of Azrael’s wing creep across his face. Then he saw the sheet and the stiff form beneath it; and knew that they were his features that were hidden; and that they were his feet that stood up stark below the covering. Then he visited his own grave, and saw the month-old grass blowing upon it, and the little cross at the head; then he dug down through the soil, swept away the earth from his coffin-plate; drew the screws and lifted the lid....
Then he placed sin beneath the white light; dissected it, analysed it, weighed it and calculated its worth, watched its development in the congenial surroundings of an innocent soul, that is rich in grace and leisure and gifts, and saw the astonishing reversal of God’s primal law illustrated in the process of corruption—the fair, sweet, fragrant creature passing into foulness. He looked carefully at the stages and modes of sin—venial sins, those tiny ulcers that weaken, poison and spoil the soul, even if they do not slay it—lukewarmness, that deathly slumber that engulfs the living thing into gradual death—and, finally, mortal sin, that one and only wholly hideous thing. He saw the indescribable sight of a naked soul in mortal sin; he saw how the earth shrank from it, how nature grew silent at it, how the sun darkened at it, how hell yelled at it, and the Love of God sickened at it.
And so, as the purgative days went by, these tempests poured over his soul, sifted through it, as the sea through a hanging weed, till all that was not organically part of his life was swept away, and he was left a simple soul alone with God. Then the second process began.
To change the metaphor, the canvas was now prepared, scoured, bleached and stretched. What is the image to be painted upon it? It is the image of Christ.
Now Father Robert laid aside his knives and his hammer, and took up his soft brushes, and began stroke by stroke, with colours beyond imagining, to lay upon the eager canvas the likeness of an adorable Lover and King. Anthony watched the portrait grow day by day with increasing wonder. Was this indeed the Jesus of Nazareth of whom he had read in the Gospels? he rubbed his eyes and looked; and yet there was no possibility of mistake,—line for line it was the same.
But this portrait grew and breathed and moved, and passed through all the stages of man’s life. First it was the Eternal Word in the bosom of the Father, the Beloved Son who looked in compassion upon the warring world beneath; and offered Himself to the Father who gave Him through the Energy of the Blessed Spirit.
Then it was a silent Maid that he saw waiting upon God, offering herself with her lily beside her; and in answer on a sudden came the lightning of Gabriel’s appearing, and, lo! the Eternal Word stole upon her down a ray of glory. And then at last he saw the dear Child born; and as he looked he was invited to enter the stable; and again he put out his hand and touched the coarse straw that lay in the manger, and fingered the rough brown cord that hung from Mary’s waist, and smelled the sweet breath of the cattle, and the burning oil of Joseph’s lantern hung against the wall, and shivered as the night wind shrilled under the ill-fitting door and awoke the tender Child.
Then he watched Him grow to boyhood, increasing in wisdom and stature, Him who was uncreated Wisdom, and in whose Hands are the worlds—followed Him, loving Him more at every step, to and from the well at Nazareth with the pitcher on His head: saw Him with blistered hands and aching back in the carpenter’s shop; then at last went south with Him to Jordan; listened with Him, hungering, to the jackals in the wilderness; rocked with Him on the high Temple spire; stared with Him at the Empires of all time, and refused them as a gift. Then he went with Him from miracle to miracle, laughed with joy at the leper’s new skin; wept in sorrow and joy with the mother at Nain, and the two sisters at Bethany; knelt with Mary and kissed His feet; went home with Matthew and Zaccheus, and sat at meat with the merry sinners; and at last began to follow silent and amazed with face set towards Jerusalem, up the long lonely road from Jericho.
Then, with love that almost burned his heart, he crouched at the moonlit door outside and watched the Supper begin. Judas pushed by him, muttering, and vanished in the shadows of the street. He heard the hush fall as the Bread was broken and the Red Wine uplifted; and he hid his face, for he dared not yet look with John upon a glory whose veils were so thin. Then he followed the silent company through the overhung streets to the Temple Courts, and down across the white bridge to the garden door. Then, bolder, he drew near, left the eight and the three and knelt close to the single Figure, who sobbed and trembled and sweated blood. Then he heard the clash of weapons and saw the glare of the torches, and longed to warn Him but could not; saw the bitter shame of the kiss and the arrest and the flight; and followed to Caiaphas’ house; heard the stinging slap; ran to Pilate’s house; saw that polished gentleman yawn and sneer; saw the clinging thongs and the splashed floor when the scourging was over; followed on to Calvary; saw the great Cross rise up at last over the heads of the crowd, and heard the storm of hoots and laughter and the dry sobs of the few women. Then over his head the sun grew dull, and the earth rocked and split, as the crosses reeled with their swinging burdens. Then, as the light came back, and the earth ended her long shudder, he saw in the evening glow that his Lord was dead. Then he followed to the tomb; saw the stone set and sealed and the watch appointed; and went home with Mary and John, and waited.
Then on Easter morning, wherever his Lord was, he was there too; with Mary in that unrecorded visit; with the women, with the Apostles; on the road to Emmaus; on the lake of Galilee; and his heart burned with Christ at his side, on lake and road and mountain.
Then at last he stood with the Twelve and saw that end that was so glorious a beginning; saw that tender sky overhead generate its strange cloud that was the door of heaven; heard far away the trumpets cry, and the harps begin to ripple for the new song that the harpers had learned at last; and then followed with his eyes the Lord whom he had now learned to know and love as never before, as He passed smiling and blessing into the heaven from which one day He will return....
There, then, as Anthony looked on the canvas, was that living, moving face and figure. What more could He have done that He did not do? What perfection could be dreamed of that was not already a thousand times His?
And when the likeness was finished, and Father Robert stepped aside from the portrait that he had painted with such tender skill and love, it is little wonder that this lad threw himself down before that eloquent vision and cried with Thomas, My Lord and my God!
Then, very gently, Father Robert led him through those last steps; up from the Illuminative to the Unitive; from the Incarnate Life with its warm human interests to that Ineffable Light that seems so chill and unreal to those who only see it through the clouds of earth, into that keen icy stillness, where only favoured and long-trained souls can breathe, up the piercing air of the slopes that lead to the Throne, and there in the listening silence of heaven, where the voice of adoration itself is silent through sheer intensity, where all colours return to whiteness and all sounds to stillness, all forms to essence and all creation to the Creator, there he let him fall in self-forgetting love and wonder, breathe out his soul in one ardent all-containing act, and make his choice.
CHAPTER XIV
EASTER DAY
Holy Week passed for Anthony like one of those strange dreams in which the sleeper awakes to find tears on his face, and does not know whether they are for joy or sorrow. At the end of the Retreat that closed on Palm Sunday evening, Anthony had made his choice, and told Father Robert.
It was not the Exercises themselves that were the direct agent, any more than were the books he had read: the books had cleared away intellectual difficulties, and the Retreat moral obstacles, and left his soul desiring the highest, keen to see it, and free to embrace it. The thought that he would have to tell Isabel appeared to him of course painful and difficult; but it was swallowed up in the joy of his conversion. He made an arrangement with Father Robert to be received at Cuckfield on Easter Eve; so that he might have an opportunity of telling Isabel before he took the actual step. The priest told him he would give him a letter to Mr. Barnes, so that he might be received immediately upon his arrival.
Holy Week, then, was occupied for Anthony in receiving instruction each morning in the little oak parlour from Father Robert; and in attending the devotions in the evening with the rest of the household. He also heard mass each day.
It was impossible, of course, to carry out the special devotions of the season with the splendour and elaboration that belonged to them; but Anthony was greatly impressed by what he saw. The tender reverence with which the Catholics loved to linger over the details of the Passion, and to set them like precious jewels in magnificent liturgical settings, and then to perform these stately heart-broken approaches to God with all the dignity and solemnity possible, appealed to him in strong contrast to the cold and loveless services, as he now thought them, of the Established Church that he had left.
On the Good Friday evening he was long in the parlour with Father Robert.
“I am deeply thankful, my son,” he said kindly, “that you have been able to come to a decision. Of course I could have wished you to enter the Society; but God has not given you a vocation to that apparently. However, you can do great work for Him as a seminary priest; and I am exceedingly glad that you will be going to Douai so soon.”
“I must just put my affairs in order at home,” he said, “and see what arrangements my sister will wish to make; and by Midsummer at the latest I shall hope to be gone.”
“I must be off early to-morrow,” said the priest. “I have to be far from here by to-morrow night, in a house where I shall hope to stay until I, too, go abroad again. Possibly we may meet at Douai in the autumn. Well, my son, pray for me.”
Anthony knelt for his blessing, and the priest was gone.
Presently Mr. Buxton came in and sat down. He was full of delight at the result of his scheme; and said so again and again.
“Who could have predicted it?” he cried. “To think that you were visiting me in prison fifteen months ago; and now this has come about in my house! Truly the Gospel blessing on your action has not been long on the way! And that you will be a priest, too! You must come and be my chaplain some day; if we are both alive and escape the gallows so long. Old Mr. Blake is sore displeased with me. I am a trial to him, I know. He will hardly speak to me in my own house; I declare I tremble when I meet him in the gallery; for fear he will rate me before my servants. I forget what his last grievance is; but I think it is something to do with a saint that he wishes me to be devout to; and I do not like her. Of course I do not doubt her sanctity; but Mr. Blake always confuses veneration and liking. I yield to none in my veneration for Saint What’s-her-name; but I do not like her; and that is an end of the matter.”