There was a different spirit in Witley Camp than there had been at Bramshott; for in the whole division—twelve battalions of infantry and three brigades of artillery, etc.,—was the one feeling of expectation of soon going overseas. Any day the orders might come.
Father Hingston had made a retreat in London, and Father Crochetiere had just returned from five days’ rest and prayer at the wonderful monastery of the Carthusian Fathers, at Parkminster. I decided to go there.
The following Monday, late in the afternoon, I drove up the winding drive, through hawthorn hedges, to the gates of the monastery. Everything seemed very quiet; no one appeared in garden or window. A bell-rope hung outside the blue-grey door. I pulled it quickly. From somewhere within came a great clanging, and almost simultaneously a clatter of heavy boots on stone flags. Inside, a bolt shot back, and immediately a white-garbed, white-bearded old brother stood before me, smiling in the opening. He shook hands with me and bade me enter.
“We have been expecting you, Father,” he said, with that gentle courtesy that one finds in a religious house. He took my grip, notwithstanding every protest and led me along the rough, stone-floored corridor to the Guest House, where I was given a large, airy corner room, plainly though adequately furnished. Snow-white sheets were on the bed—I had not seen sheets for a long time.
The old white brother told me to sit down,—that presently the Retreat Master would come. Then he left me. I went over to a window and looked out. Just below was a large garden with rose-fringed walks, enclosed by a very high stone wall. Outside the wall green fields, fringed with dark trees, stretched far away. Beyond these, rolling Sussex downs, looking greyish-blue in the summer haze, rose to meet the skyline.
A strange peace was everywhere, and save for a slight nervousness that seemed to have come to me with the great silence of the house, I was glad that I had come.
In a little while a knock sounded on the door and the Retreat Master entered. He was not very tall, and rather slight, and though his hair was grey he was not old. There was nothing very distinctive in his face, now rough with a three-days’ growth of beard—the rule of the order is to shave every fifteen days—and there was not much color in his cheeks. The eyes were small, grey and almost piercing. But there was that same indefinable atmosphere of peace about him. It seemed as if he had stepped aside from the great noisy highway of the world to listen in silence to the voice of God. Yet, as he talked, the Father seemed to take a childish interest in all that I told him of my experiences in a great military camp with officers and men of the world. But away below the wonder that rippled over the surface of the spirit of the monk there seemed to be great depths of silence, and as I tried to fathom these depths, I felt a strange helplessness come over me. I could not understand this man who sat smiling simply and cordially, and at the same time seemed to be enveloped in an atmosphere not of this world.
Before he left for the evening the Retreat Master pointed to a card that hung on the wall. “The Order of Retreat,” he said. “You will be able to follow it?”
I assured the Father that I would, and then he was gone for the night.
My retreat passed very quickly—I had only five days—and during that time I forgot all about war and preparations for war. Every day for about half an hour the Retreat Master came to my room and talked a little. He told me many things about the monastic life that I found very interesting. Each monk, he explained, lived in a little brick two-story house which was attached to the great main corridor that formed a quadrangle about the church. The lower story was a kind of workshop in which was a lathe and different kinds of carpenters’ tools, and to it the monk descended in his free time to do manual work. A small garden, in between the different houses, was allotted to each monk, where he worked for a while each day and grew vegetables for his own frugal board.
One day I told the Retreat Master that I had read a description of Parkminster in one of the late Monsignor Benson’s novels, “The Conventionalists.”
The monk smiled reminiscently. He recalled the day that Mr. Benson—he was an Anglican at the time of his visit—in company with another minister, had called. Mr. Benson had seemed very much interested. The other had made some strange remark. Monsignor Benson had never visited the Monastery as a priest, nor had he ever brought any one there to join the community. The monk assured me of this, and he had been Guest Master for many years. Yet when I had read “The Conventionalists” I had been almost convinced that the story related was a personal experience. It may have been to some other monastery that the young man had gone, although Monsignor Benson had said Parkminster.
Shortly before I left the monastery the Retreat Master came to have a last chat. “When you reach the front,” he said, “tell your men that we are praying for them day after day, night after night.”
I felt a strange feeling of security on hearing these words, but as I left the monastery gates and turned to say farewell to the old monk, I felt a distinct sinking of my heart. “Perhaps,” he said rapturously, “you’ll be a martyr!”