An enormous physical weariness settled down on Frank, as he trudged silently with the Major, towards evening, a week later.

He had worked all the previous day in a farm-yard—carting manure, and the like; and though he was perfectly well again, some of the spring had ebbed from his muscles during his week's rest. This day, too, the first of November, had been exhausting. They had walked since daybreak, after a wretched night in a barn, plodding almost in silence, mile after mile, against a wet south-west wind, over a discouraging kind of high-road that dipped and rose and dipped again, and never seemed to arrive anywhere.

It is true that Frank was no longer intensely depressed; quite another process had been at work upon him for the last two or three months, as will be seen presently; but his limbs seemed leaden, and the actual stiffness in his shoulders and loins made walking a little difficult.

They were all tired together. They did not say much to one another. They had, in fact, said all that there was to be said months ago; and they were reduced—as men always are reduced when a certain pitch is reached—to speak simply of the most elementary bodily things—food, tobacco and sleep. The Major droned on now and then—recalling luxuries of past days—actual roofs over the head, actual hot meat to put in the mouth, actual cigars—and Frank answered him. Gertie said nothing.

She made up for it, soon after dark had fallen, by quite suddenly collapsing into a hedge, and announcing that she would die if she didn't rest. The Major made the usual remarks, and she made no answer.

Frank interposed suddenly.

"Shut up," he said. "We can't stop here. I'll go on a bit and see what can be done."

And, as he went off into the darkness, leaving his bundle, he heard the scolding voice begin again, but it was on a lower key and he knew it would presently subside into a grumble, soothed by tobacco.

He had no idea as to the character of the road that lay before him. They had passed through a few villages that afternoon, whose names meant nothing to him, and he scarcely knew why, even, they were going along this particular road. They were moving southwards towards London—so much had been agreed—and they proposed to arrive there in another month or so. But the country was unfamiliar to him, and the people seemed grudging and uncouth. They had twice been refused the use of an outhouse for the night, that afternoon.

It seemed an extraordinarily deserted road. There were no lights from houses, so far as he could make out, and the four miles that had been declared at their last stopping-place to separate them from the next village appeared already more like five or six. Certainly the three of them had between two and three shillings, all told; there was no actual need of a workhouse just yet, but naturally it was wished to spend as little as possible.

Then on a sudden he caught a glimpse of a light burning somewhere, that appeared and vanished again as he moved, and fifty yards more brought him to a wide sweep, a pair of gate-posts with the gate fastened back, and a lodge on the left-hand side. So much he could make out dimly through the November darkness; and as he stood there hesitating, he thought he could see somewhere below him a few other lights burning through the masses of leafless trees through which the drive went downhill.

He knew very well by experience that lodge-keepers were, taken altogether, perhaps the most unsympathetic class in the community. (They live, you see, right on the high road, and see human nature at its hottest and crossest as well as its most dishonest.) Servants at back doors were, as a rule, infinitely more obliging; and, as obviously this was the entrance to some big country house, the right thing to do would be to steal past the lodge on tiptoe and seek his fortune amongst the trees. Yet he hesitated; the house might be half a mile away, for all he knew; and, certainly there was a hospitable look about the fastened-back gate.

There came a gust of wind over the hills behind him, laden with wet.... He turned, went up to the lodge door and knocked.

He could hear someone moving about inside, and just as he was beginning to wonder whether his double tap had been audible, the door opened and disclosed a woman in an apron.

"Can you very kindly direct me—" began Frank politely.

The woman jerked her head sharply in the direction of the house.

"Straight down the hill," she said. "Them's the orders."

"But—"

It was no good; the door was shut again in his face, and he stood alone in the dark.

This was all very unusual. Lodge-keepers did not usually receive "orders" to send tramps, without credentials, on to the house which the lodge was supposed to guard.... That open gate, then, must have been intentional. Plainly, however, he must take her at her word; and as he tramped down the drive, he began to form theories. It must be a fanatic of some kind who lived here, and he inclined to consider the owner as probably an eccentric old lady with a fad, and a large number of lap-dogs.

As he came nearer, through the trees, he became still more astonished, for as the branches thinned, he became aware of lights burning at such enormous distances apart that the building seemed more like a village than a house.

Straight before him shone a row of lighted squares, high up, as if hung in air, receding in perspective, till blocked out by a black mass which seemed a roof of some kind; far on the left shone some kind of illuminated gateway, and to his right another window or two glimmered almost beneath his feet.

Another fifty yards down the winding drive disclosed a sight that made him seriously wonder whether the whole experience were real, for now only a few steps further on, and still lower than the level at which he was, stood, apparently, a porter's lodge, as of a great college. There was a Tudor archway, with rooms above it and rooms on either side; a lamp hung from the roof illuminated the dry stone pavement within, and huge barred gates at the further end, shut off all other view. It looked like the entrance to some vast feudal castle, and he thought again that if an eccentric old lady lived here, she must be very eccentric indeed. He began to wonder whether a seneschal in a belt hung with keys would presently make his appearance: he considered whether or not he could wind a horn, if there were no other way of summoning the retainers.

When at last he tapped at a small interior door, also studded and barred with iron, and the door opened, the figure he did see was hardly less of a shock to him than a seneschal would have been.

For there stood, as if straight out of a Christmas number, the figure of a monk, tall, lean, with gray hair, clean-shaven, with a pair of merry eyes and a brisk manner. He wore a broad leather band round his black frock, and carried his spare hand thrust deep into it.

(II)

The monk sighed humorously.

"Another of them," he said. "Well, my man?"

"Please, father—"

The monk closed his eyes as in resignation.

"You needn't try that on," he said. "Besides, I'm not a father. I'm a brother. Can you remember that?"

Frank smiled back.

"Very well, brother. I'm a Catholic myself."

"Ah! yes," sighed the monk briskly. "That's what they all say. Can you say the 'Divine Praises'? Do you know what they are?... However, that makes no difference, as—"

"But I can, brother. 'Blessed be God. Blessed be His—"

"But you're not Irish?"

"I know I'm not. But—"

"Are you an educated man? However, that's not my affair. What can I do for you, sir?"

The monk seemed to take a little more interest in him, and Frank took courage.

"Yes," he said, "I'm an educated man. My name's Frank Gregory. I've got two friends out on the road up there—a man and a woman. Their name's Trustcott—and the woman—"

"No good; no good," said the monk. "No women."

"But, brother, she really can't go any further. I'm very sorry, but we simply must have shelter. We've got two or three shillings, if necessary—"

"Oh, you have, have you?" said the monk keenly. "That's quite new. And when did you touch food last? Yesterday morning? (Don't say 'S'elp me!' It's not necessary.)"

"We last touched food about twelve o'clock to-day. We had beans and cold bacon," said Frank deliberately. "We're perfectly willing to pay for shelter and food, if we're obliged. But, of course, we don't want to."

The monk eyed him very keenly indeed a minute or two without speaking. This seemed a new type.

"Come in and sit down a minute," he said. "I'll fetch the guest-master."

It was a very plain little room in which Frank sat, and seemed designed, on purpose, to furnish no temptation to pilferers. There was a table, two chairs, a painted plaster statue of a gray-bearded man in black standing on a small bracket with a crook in his hand; a pious book, much thumb-marked, lay face downwards on the table beside the oil lamp. There was another door through which the monk had disappeared, and that was absolutely all. There was no carpet and no curtains, but a bright little coal fire burned on the hearth, and two windows looked, one up the drive down which Frank had come, and the other into some sort of courtyard on the opposite side.

About ten minutes passed away without anything at all happening. Frank heard more than one gust of rain-laden wind dash against the little barred window to the south, and he wondered how his friends were getting on. The Major, at any rate, he knew, would manage to keep himself tolerably dry. Then he began to think about this place, and was surprised that he was not surprised at running into it like this in the dark. He knew nothing at all about monasteries—he hardly knew that there were such things in England (one must remember that he had only been a Catholic for about five months), and yet somehow, now that he had come here, it all seemed inevitable. (I cannot put it better than that: it is what he himself says in his diary.)

Then, as he meditated, the door opened, and there came in a thin, eager-looking elderly man, dressed like the brother who followed him, except that over his frock he wore a broad strip of black stuff, something like a long loose apron, hanging from his throat to his feet, and his head was enveloped in a black hood.

Frank stood up and bowed with some difficulty. He was beginning to feel stiff.

"Well," said the priest sharply, with his bright gray eyes, puckered at the corners, running over and taking in the whole of Frank's figure from close-cut hair to earthy boots. "Brother James tells me you wish to see me."

"It was Brother James who said so, father," said Frank.

"What is it you want?"

"I've got two friends on the road who want shelter—man and woman. We'll pay, if necessary, but—"

"Never mind about that," interrupted the priest sharply. "Who are you?"

"The name I go by is Frank Gregory."

"The name you go by, eh?... Where were you educated?"

"Eton and Cambridge."

"How do you come to be on the roads?"

"That's a long story, father."

"Did you do anything you shouldn't?"

"No. But I've been in prison since."

"And your name's Frank Gregory.... F.G., eh?"

Frank turned as if to leave. He understood that he was known.

"Well—good-night, father—"

The priest turned with upraised hand.

"Brother James, just step outside."

Then he continued as the door closed.

"You needn't go, Mr.—er—Gregory. Your name shall not be mentioned to a living being without your leave."

"You know about me?"

"Of course I do.... Now be sensible, my dear fellow; go and fetch your friends. We'll manage somehow." (He raised his voice and rapped on the table.) "Brother James ... go up with Mr. Gregory to the porter's lodge. Make arrangements to put the woman up somewhere, either there or in a gardener's cottage. Then bring the man down here.... His name?"

"Trustcott," said Frank.

"And when you come back, I shall be waiting for you here."

(III)

Frank states in his diary that an extraordinary sense of familiarity descended on him as, half an hour later, the door of a cell closed behind Dom Hildebrand Maple, and he found himself in a room with a bright fire burning, a suit of clothes waiting for him, a can of hot water, a sponging tin and a small iron bed.

I think I understand what he means. Somehow or other a well-ordered monastery represents the Least Common Multiple of nearly all pleasant houses. It has the largeness and amplitude of a castle, and the plainness of decent poverty. It has none of that theatricality which it is supposed to have, none of the dreaminess or the sentimentality with which Protestants endow it. He had passed just now through, first, a network of small stairways, archways, vestibules and passages, and then along two immense corridors with windows on one side and closed doors on the other. Everywhere there was the same quiet warmth and decency and plainness—stained deal, uncarpeted boards, a few oil pictures in the lower corridor, an image or two at the turn and head of the stairs; it was lighted clearly and unaffectedly by incandescent gas, and the only figures he had seen were of two or three monks, with hooded heads (they had raised these hoods slightly in salutation as he passed), each going about his business briskly and silently. There was even a cheerful smell of cooking at the end of one of the corridors, and he had caught a glimpse of two or three aproned lay brothers, busy in the firelight and glow of a huge kitchen, over great copper pans.

The sense of familiarity, then, is perfectly intelligible: a visitor to a monastery steps, indeed, into a busy and well-ordered life, but there is enough room and air and silence for him to preserve his individuality too.

As soon as he was washed and dressed, he sat down in a chair before the fire; but almost immediately there came a tap on his door, and the somewhat inflamed face of the Major looked in.

"Frankie?" he whispered, and, reassured, came in and closed the door behind. (He looked very curiously small and unimportant, thought Frank. Perhaps it was the black suit that had been lent him.)

"By gad, Frankie ... we're in clover," he whispered, still apparently under the impression that somehow he was in church. "There are some other chaps, you know, off the roads too, but they're down by the lodge somewhere." (He broke off and then continued.) "I've got such a queer Johnnie in my room—ah! you've got one, too."

He went up to examine a small plaster statue of a saint above the prie-dieu.

"It's all right, isn't it?" said Frank sleepily.

"And there's another Johnnie's name on the door. The Rev. S. Augustine, or something."

He tip-toed back to the fire, lifted his tails, and stood warming himself with a complacent but nervous smile.

(Frank regarded him with wonder.)

"What do all the Johnnies do here?" asked the Major presently. "Have a rare old time, I expect. I bet they've got cellars under here all right. Just like those chaps in comic pictures, ain't it?"

(Frank decided it was no use to try to explain.)

The Major babbled on a minute or two longer, requiring no answer, and every now and then having his roving eye caught by some new marvel. He fingered a sprig of yew that was twisted into a crucifix hung over the bed. ("Expect it's one of those old relics," he said, "some lie or other.") He humorously dressed up the statue of the saint in a pocket-handkerchief, and said: "Let us pray," in a loud whisper, with one eye on the door. And all the while there still lay on him apparently the impression that if he talked loud or made any perceptible sound he would be turned out again.

He was just beginning a few steps of a noiseless high-kicking dance when there was a tap at the door, and he collapsed into an attitude of weak-kneed humility. Dom Hildebrand came in.

"If you're ready," he said, "we might go down to supper."

Frank relates in his diary that of all else in the monastery, apart from the church, the refectory and its manners impressed him most. (How easy it is to picture it when one has once seen the ceremonies!)

He sat at a center table, with the Major opposite (looking smaller than ever), before a cloth laid with knife, spoon and forks. All round the walls on a low daÏs, with their backs against them, sat a row of perhaps forty monks, of every age, kind and condition. The tables were bare wood, laid simply with utensils and no cloths, with a napkin in each place. At the end opposite the door there sat at a table all alone a big, portly, kindly-faced man, of a startlingly fatherly appearance, clean-shaven, gray-haired, and with fine features. This was the Abbot. Above him hung a crucifix, with the single word "Sitio" beneath it on a small black label.

The meal began, however, with the ceremony of singing grace. The rows of monks stood out, with one in the middle, facing the Abbot, each with his hood forward and his hands hidden in his scapular. It was sung to a grave tone, with sudden intonations, by the united voices in unison—blessing, response, collect, psalm and the rest. (Frank could not resist one glance at the Major, whose face of consternation resembled that of a bird in the company of sedate cats.)

Then each went to his place, and, noiselessly, the orderly meal began and continued to the reading first of the gospel, and then of a history, from a pulpit built high in the wall. All were served by lay brothers, girded with aprons; almost every movement, though entirely natural, seemed ordered by routine and custom, and was distinguished by a serious sort of courtesy that made the taking of food appear, for once, as a really beautiful, august, and almost sacramental ceremony. The great hall, too, with its pointed roof, its tiled floor, its white-wood scrubbed tables, and its tall emblazoned windows, seemed exactly the proper background—a kind of secular sanctuary. The food was plain and plentiful: soup, meat, cheese and fruit; and each of the two guests had a small decanter of red wine, a tiny loaf of bread, and a napkin. The monks drank beer or water.

Then once more followed grace, with the same ceremonial.

When this was ended, Frank turned to see where Father Hildebrand was, supposing that all would go to their rooms; but as he turned he saw the Abbot coming down alone. He moved on, this great man, with that same large, fatherly air, but as he passed the two guests, he inclined slightly towards them, and Frank, with a glance to warn the Major, understanding that they were to follow, came out of his place and passed down between the lines of the monks, still in silence.

The Abbot went on, turned to the right, and as he moved along the cloister, loud sonorous chanting began behind. So they went, on and on, up the long lighted corridor, past door after door, as in some church procession. Yet all was obviously natural and familiar.

They turned in at last beneath an archway to the left, went through a vestibule, past a great stone of a crowned Woman with a Child in her arms, and as they entered the church, the Abbot dipped his finger into a stoop and presented it to Frank. Frank touched the drop of water, made the sign of the cross, and presented again his damp finger to the Major, who looked at him with a startled eye.

The Abbot indicated the front row of the seats in the nave, and Frank went into it, to watch the procession behind go past, flow up the steps, and disappear into the double rows of great stalls that lined the choir.

There was still silence—and longer silence, till Frank understood....

(IV)

His eyes grew accustomed to the gloom little by little, and he began to be able to make out the magnificence of the place he was in. Behind him stretched the immense nave, its roof and columns lost in darkness, its sides faintly illuminated by the glimmer of single oil-lamps, each in a small screened-off chapel. But in front of him was the greater splendor.

From side to side across the entrance to the choir ran the rood-screen, a vast erection of brown oak and black iron, surmounted by a high loft, from which glimmered down sheaves of silvered organ pipes, and, higher yet, in deep shadow, he could make out three gigantic figures, of which the center one was nailed to a cross. Beyond this began the stalls—dark and majestic, broken by carving—jutting heads of kings and priests leaning forward as if to breathe in the magnetism of that immense living silence generated by forty men at their prayers. At the further end there shone out faintly the glory of the High Altar, almost luminous, it seemed, in the light of the single red spark that hung before it. Frank could discern presently the gilded figures that stood among the candlesticks behind, the throne and crucifix, the mysterious veiling curtains of the Tabernacle.... Finally, in the midst of the choir, stood a tall erection which he could not understand.

An extraordinary peace seemed to descend and envelop him as he looked—a kind of crown and climax of various interior experiences that were falling on him now—for the last few weeks. (It is useless trying to put it into words. I shall hope to do my best presently by quoting Frank himself.) There was a sense of home-coming; there was a sense of astonishing sanity; there was a sense of an enormous objective peace, meeting and ratifying that interior peace which was beginning to be his. It appeared to him, somehow, as if for the first time he experienced without him that which up to now he had chiefly found within. Certainly there had been moments of this before—not merely emotional, you understand—when heart and head lay still from their striving, and the will reposed in Another Will. But this was the climax: it summed up all that he had learned in the last few months; it soothed the last scars away, it explained and answered—and, above all, correlated—his experiences. No doubt it was the physical, as well as the spiritual, atmosphere of this place, the quiet corridors, the warmth and the plainness and the solidity, even the august grace of the refectory—all these helped and had part in the sensation. Yet, if it is possible for you to believe it, these were no more than the vessels from which the heavenly fluid streamed; vessels, rather, that contained a little of that abundance that surged up here as in a fountain....

Frank started a little at a voice in his ear.

"When's it going to begin?" whispered the Major in a hoarse, apprehensive voice.

(V)

A figure detached itself presently from the dark mass of the stalls and came down to where they were sitting. Frank perceived it was Father Hildebrand.

"We're singing Mattins of the Dead, presently," he said in a low voice. "It's All Souls' Eve. Will you stay, or shall I take you to your room?"

The Major stood up with alacrity.

"I'll stay, if I may," said Frank.

"Very well. Then I'll take Mr. Trustcott upstairs."

Half an hour later the ceremony began.

Here, I simply despair of description. I know something of what Frank witnessed and perceived, for I have been present myself at this affair in a religious house; but I do not pretend to be able to write it down.

First, however, there was the external, visible, audible service: the catafalque, a bier-like erection, all black and yellow, guarded by yellow flames on yellow candles—the grave movements, the almost monstrous figures, the rhythm of the ceremonies, and the wail of, the music of forty voices singing as one—all that is understood....

But the inner side of these things—the reverse of which these things are but a coarse lining, the substance of which this is a shadow—that is what passes words and transcends impressions.

It seemed to Frank that one section, at any rate, of that enormous truth at which he had clutched almost blindly when he had first made his submission to the Church—one chamber in that House of Life—was now flung open before him, and he saw in it men as trees walking.... He was tired and excited, of course; he was intensely imaginative; but there are some experiences that a rise of temperature cannot explain and that an imagination cannot originate....

For it seemed to him that here he was aware of an immeasurable need to which those ministrations were addressed, and this whole was countless in its units and clamant in its silence. It was as a man might see the wall of his room roll away, beyond which he had thought only the night to lie, and discern a thronging mass of faces crying for help, pressing upon him, urging, yet all without sound or word. He attempts in his diary to use phrases for all this—he speaks of a pit in which is no water, of shadows and forms that writhe and plead, of a light of glass mingled with fire; and yet of an inevitability, of a Justice which there is no questioning and a Force that there is no resisting. And, on the other side, there was this help given by men of flesh and blood like himself—using ceremonies and gestures and strange resonant words.... The whole was as some enormous orchestra—there was the wail on this side, the answer on that—the throb of beating hearts—there were climaxes, catastrophes, soft passages, and yet the result was one vast and harmonious whole.

It was the catafalque that seemed to him the veiled door to that other world that so manifested itself—seen as he saw it in the light of the yellow candles—it was as the awful portal of death itself; beneath that heavy mantle lay not so much a Body of Humanity still in death, as a Soul of Humanity alive beyond death, quick and yet motionless with pain. And those figures that moved about it, with censor and aspersorium, were as angels for tenderness and dignity and undoubted power. They were men like himself, yet they were far more; and they, too, one day, like himself, would pass beneath that pall and need the help of others that should follow them....

Something of this is but a hint of what Frank experienced; it came and went, no doubt, in gusts, yet all through he seems to have felt that sense that here was a door into that great watching world beyond—that here, in what is supposed by the world to be the narrow constraint of religion, was a liberty and an outlook into realities such as the open road and nature can but seldom give. But for my part, I can no more follow him further than I can write down the passion of the lover and the ecstasy of the musician. If these things could be said in words, they would have been said long ago. But at least it was along this path of perception that Frank went—a path that but continued the way along which he had come with such sure swiftness ever since the moment he had taken his sorrows and changed them from bitter to sweet. Some sentences that he has written mean nothing to me at all....

Only this I see clearly, both from my talks with Father Hildebrand and from the diary which Frank amplified at his bidding—that Frank had reached the end of a second stage in his journey, and that a third was to begin.

It is significant also, I think, in view of what is to follow, that the last initiation of this stage should have taken place on such an occasion as this.