Tired wan clean men, with corns on their right-middle-fingers and jackets bulging along their lower edges, addressed her as “Madam” and mentioned similar experiences; and, when two straight-limbed straight-eyed boys of sixteen, twins, orphans, were fierce with the same story, she began to feel uncomfortable, envious. That He should do these things for these scarecrows and nothing for her! People avoided her; and she was lonely. Sant, and the cosmopolitan bagmen with whom he fraternized, were no companions for her. She expected something a little more select in the way of society. She conceived the notion that she would stand a better chance of coming into contact with the Pope by means of some of the English in Rome. And,—would it not be as well if she became a Catholic? The hotel-people told her that very few English were in Rome: they began to come in October and to go away in June: July, August, September, saw no English except at the colleges and a few residents. She found her way to St. Andrea delle Fratte, where she had heard of some Englishwoman’s tomb; and saw no one who looked like an Englishman. She had the same experience at the church by the G.P.O. Then she discerned a little English affair in Little Sebastian Street, a convent of sorts; and she made herself conspicuous to the sisters. Those good creatures were only too happy to discover a chatty Englishwoman; and, when Mrs. Crowe quite accidentally let out that she had known George Arthur Rose, they precipitately produced candied fruit and orangeade. Mrs. Crowe gossiped with discretion. She won hearts by listening attentively to monasterial rhapsodies. When she was permitted to slip in a word edgeways, she took care that it was a telling word. In all their lives the sisters never had heard anything so edifying as her description of the Holy Father’s former predilection for white flannel shirts, white knitted socks and night-caps. They thought it heavenly of Him to have refused to wear any colours but white or black while He was living in the world; and the details of a black corduroy shooting-suit filled them with ecstatic rapture. In the course of these improving conversations it came out that Mrs. Crowe herself was an agnostic—an unwilling agnostic, she whined,—oh, if only she could believe what her audience believed, it would be such a comfort to her! Naturally the sisters gladly would help her to that kind of comfort. They gave her an aluminium medal; and promised prayers. She turned-up regularly at mass and benediction; and they had great hopes of her. She thanked them so much. Now, wouldn’t she just like to have a little talk with Father Dawkins—such a holy man? She would like nothing better. She had a little talk with Father Dawkins: that is to say that (frequently during the next few weeks) His Reverency exhorted for three-quarters of an hour on end in the convent parlour; and she punctuated his discourses with “Ah yes,” “How true,” “Why did I never hear this before,” etc. The sisters lent her “Thresholds,” and other violently cerulean books. She pronounced them quite convincing. And then she asked to be received into the Church.
She became seen at parties at the English pensions; and duly was slavered. She met cardinals and prelates at receptions. She was the excitement of the moment. Her pose of the interesting widow, fond mother of the dearest little girl and boy, clever writer of vers de société in The Maid and Matron, was much commended: but it was as the woman whose dear departed had been the Holy Father’s most intimate friend that she chiefly scored. For His Holiness she always had had the highest admiration. He had been a peculiar man, certainly, but never anything but most distinguished. She remembered Him in poverty, going in the shabbiest of garbs: but His gait and carriage always had been the gait and carriage of nobility of soul. At all times, she herself had predicted some extraordinary fate for Him. She told the most adorable little stories of His wit, His humour, His pathos, and His dumb-bells. She dilated on a boil which had afflicted the back of His neck. She had heard that He slept in glycerined gloves for the softening of His chapped hands. Yes, He had been quite a friend of theirs. He was so earnest, so brilliant, so learned, that she never had been able to understand why a man of His ability should be a Catholic. Of course that was when she herself had been in outer darkness. Now that she was in the inner light, she perfectly could see why. Mrs. Crowe was voted to be a very charming person; and became a great success.
Sant approved of her procedure. Neither he nor she could see their way to another direct approach to Hadrian. They must bide a wee. Meanwhile, no harm was done and much good might be done by cultivating the English quarter. And, perhaps it would be as well to keep socialism in the background for the present. Jerry would stay where he was; and she had better set-up for herself elsewhere: they occasionally could meet to compare notes; and, if anything particular happed, why they could write. So Mrs. Crowe took a little flat on Baboon Street, and displayed herself at the Spain Square tea-shop and the English sisterhood.
At the back of her brain there was a well-defined desire. She kept it there to gloat over in private and at intervals: for she was far too clever a woman to let her passion master her at this stage. It was the mainspring of her acts, the goal of her thoughts, the ultimate of her existence: but she kept it well concealed and controlled. Now and then, in the lonely depth of night, it surged to her oppression: but dawn and the respectability of her temper, brought it within bounds. She played a careful game, adding to her counters as opportunity occurred. She had the Liblabs and their four pounds a week to support her: she had (what she called) the secret history of the Pope in her possession: she was capturing the pious English. And then, one evening she acquired quite a priceless item of scandal which, sooner or later, she would use for the procuration of her Georgie.
She had been wandering about alone in some of those new streets on the Viminal Hill, which Modern Rome built in imitation of the suburban residences of British merchants: streets where comfortable red-brick detached mansions stand each in a railed garden. As she was passing one of these fine but homely residences, the electric light sprang up in the drawing-room; and she was aware of three figures seated in the bay-window. An afternoon-tea-table was between them. They were two gorgeous white women with fair hair, evidently mother and daughter. Those she did not know: but the third was George Arthur Rose. She peered between the gilded bronze bars of the gate. It was dusk. No one but herself was in the street. And there, not twenty yards away, behind a pane of glass, was the man she worshipped. She gave up herself to her emotions during one minute. Then he and the women retired to the back of the room; and a decorous black-coated lacquey closed the curtains. For a moment, she felt like battering at the gate. Her heart violently palpitated. The connotation of the experience suddenly struck her. What was the Pope doing here? She knew that He went about everywhere: but they said that He never ate or drank in company; and she had seen Him finish a cup of tea. How dainty the elevation of that left little finger was! Ah! Why was He not dressed in white as usual? Disguised—taking tea in a private house—with two nameless women! Ah, why indeed! She focussed her fury. The number on the gate—yes. She ran to the end of the street and read “Via Morino.” She crossed the road and returned; and found a niche where she could hide in the shadow of a pillared wall. Here, she watched and waited as a terrier waits on and watches a kitten demure in a tree—yapping and yelping almost inaudibly, well-nigh bursting with suppressed impulse to pounce. Perhaps she waited half-an-hour. Then a couple of lacqueys came-down to the gate: opened it; and obsequiously bowed to an ecclesiastic who passed out into the street flinging the right fold of his cloak over his left shoulder. He swiftly walked towards Via Nationale; and she followed him. As he came into the more brilliant light, he drew the fold of his cloak closer across his mouth. That act decided her. She knew that her Georgie abhorred from every kind of muffling. That he should muffle now was natural enough. He did not wish to be recognised. He was incognito, for an evil purpose. That he should have chosen openly to walk through the biggest street in Rome, when he might have sneaked down bye-ways, or might have taken a cab, only added to the evidence. Her Georgie was the most frantically daring of men, she knew. Precaution on the one hand, nullified by extreme audacity on the other
, she had noted in him before. She nearly lost him as he made his way by the Austrian Embassy and the Gesù into Corso Vittorio Emanuele. At the Oratory he crossed and went by the little Piazza into Banchi, where he left a card with the porter of the Palazzo Attendolo. Again, he muffled his face and went on, crossing the temporary bridge, and going by Borgo Vecchio straight to the gate of the Vatican. Here, he was admitted; and Mrs. Crowe was left alone in agony and in hilarity. She turned-out of the Colonnade into the square cursing herself for not speaking to him, writhing because she had caught her loved one secretly visiting another woman. Then she laughed at the thought that she had found His Holiness the Pope engaged in vulgar intrigue. The barb of the one emotion lacerated her. The barb of the other she would save to dilacerate Him.
CHAPTER XIII
On the night of the second of October, the German Emperor sat in the Imperial box at the Berlin Schauspielhaus. They were playing Wilhelm Tell. William II. looked-on at the mummer pourtraying the audacious genius who, by skill and courage, delivered a people from tyranny. He looked on the presented incident with a humorous sense of its coincidence with his present intention: for, in the imperial mind—that agile predominant mind at which inferior minds (led by the Pall Mall Gazette) were used to mock—was stored certain knowledge of another scene yet to be enacted in which he himself would play the part of the deliverer. An aide-de-camp entered during the interval, while the house gave itself up to conversation, apples, nuts, pfefferkuchen. He handed a locked portfolio to the Kaiser.
“The papers are all here?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“The manager attends?”
“He is at the door, Sire.”
“He has received my commands?”
“Your Majesty’s commands have been executed.”
“Good. I will follow him. Go now to the newspaper-offices; and bring the specials to me after supper. Mahlzeit!”
The curtain went up for the last act. The audience was stricken with sudden paralyzed amazement. On the stage, actors, scene-shifters, the whole theatre staff, were grouped in an immense semicircle. In the chord of the semicircle, one figure stood alone, grimly dominant. At first, it was taken for a daringly realistic caricature of the Emperor; and fear of the penalties of lèse-majesté dawned in the minds of the beholders. But the figure spoke, and doubt fled. It was the Emperor. Everyone knew that vigorous vocative “Germans!” The said Germans were used to manifestations of their ruler’s omniscience and omnipresence; and they automatically stood to listen. He quoted the assertion of Herr Bebmarck in the Reichstag, that every speech by the Kaiser against Socialists meant a socialist gain of 100,000 votes at the elections. Then he flung out a challenge. He said that the insuing elections meant war to the knife, not between him and his people but, between him and the handful of venal demagogues unworthy to bear the sacred name of Germans who led his people astray. He opened his portfolio. Socialism, he said, commanded four million votes. One-third of the German Army was Socialist. Socialism was the largest political party in the Empire; and increased each year at the expense of every other party. It was a vast and important body. A body needed a brain to direct its functions. Who, after all, was the head? The demagogues, or the Kaiser? At a moment like the present, when the Fatherland was menaced on both sides by anarchy and hereditary enemies, the glorious German nation must not be harassed by intestine feuds. Hitherto, a great part of his people had been taught to obstruct his schemes for German welfare. Thereby they had hurt themselves. They had had the pleasure of opposing him: but they had delayed their own betterment: for his alone was the will which should rule Germany. Yet, he would not blame his people. They had been betrayed by liars, deceived by treacherous pseudophilanthropists. He would not blame the tempted, but the tempters. The names of the tempters, the human Satans, were August Bebmarck, turner: Grillerbergen, locksmith: Raue, Bulermolken, Reistem, saddlers: Varmol, ex-post-official: Steinbern, lawyer: Volkenberg, territorial-magnate: Singenmann, capitalist. He arraigned these men on a charge of having deluded the good heart of four million German people by professions of disinterestedness, of benevolence, by promises of universal betterment. He denounced their professions and their promises as false, and their practices as corrupt enough to have obtained the attention of the police. The socialist demagogues were traitors to the very cause which they professed to serve. Their object was not the improvement of the social conditions of the people: it was personal aggrandisement. He brought proofs from his portfolio. Bebmarck, Grillenberger, Varmol had accepted bribes of M. 100,000, M. 45,000, M. 40,000 respectively from the communist government of France. Raue, Bulermolken, Reistem had accepted the post of saddlery contractors to the French army. Each of the foregoing had given a written promise to influence the Socialist vote. The Kaiser read and exhibited the promises; and continued. Steinbern had sold the minute books of various Socialist committees in Hanover for M. 300,000. (The books were produced by an imperial aide.) Volkenberg had scouted the proposal to municipalize his own vast possessions: Singenmann was proved to have derived his riches from ill-paid sweated labour.
“These be thy gods, O Socialism,” the Emperor cried: “the mere possession of important private property, of what is called a stake in the country, has revealed their brazen faces and feet of clay. The mere offer of the price of blood has revealed the Iscariots of the Fatherland.”
He commanded his hearers to remember that in 1890 he himself had abrogated the laws against socialism and had dismissed the persecutor Bismarck, saying Die Social Democratic überlassen sie mir mit der werdeich gang alleine fertig. He said that his method had been to leave them free to work out their own salvation: but in vain. A bad tree does not bring forth good fruit. It had not been socialism, nor parliamentary majorities and resolutions, which had welded together the German Empire: but the army and he, the Emperor, the representative of that power in the state which, not only created German unity in the teeth of those who pretended to represent the people but, thereby carried into every German home the sense of national power. Finally, he demanded, did the innocent industrious great-hearted dupes of the socialist demagogues intend in this crisis of German history to follow and obey the behests of low-born traitors, never-sufficiently-to-be-damned-and-despised sweaters, infamous Rabagases: or would they give loyal allegiance to him, their divinely appointed and legitimate Kaiser, the heir of Friedrich the Noble and of Wilhelm the Good and of Friedrich the Great,—to him, the Father of the fatherland, whose whole life and energy was devoted and consecrated to “Deutschland Deutschland über alles.”
With that, he left the stage and the theatre. The audience, a typically middle-class one, the very class of all others to which such an oration would appeal, was stirred down to the depths of its phlegmatic Teutonic soul. As the Kaiser departed, not a “Hoch” was uttered: but multitudes of stern-faced converts poured out, silently saluting him with the fire of loyalty lighted in their eyes. Germans are logical by nature. Display indefeasible premisses; and it is not a German who will err from the just conclusion. All night long, all the newspapers except the Vorwaerts issued special editions containing the Emperor’s speech. During the next few days William II. himself repeated it in the great cities of his empire. At Essen and Breslau his reception partook of the nature of an ovation. Everywhere the press spread his epoch-making words to all who actually did not hear them. German good sense preferred honesty, vigorous masterly honesty, even hare-brained honesty, to the base treachery which is actuated by no motive except personal gain. German good sense could see that the Kaiser himself was the hardest-working man in the Empire: that his simply amazing diligence and toil were absolutely unselfish, absolutely impersonal: that he gained no tangible reward whatever: that his life, which quite easily might have been one of irresponsible pleasure and ease, was an incessant round of mental and physical exertion for the good of others. German honour admired and German generosity repaid. The fascinating personality of William II. at last was recognized as the chief element of
the nation’s power. His splendid and unique confidence in himself and his imperial vocation inspired his subjects with confidence in him. The device of the secret ballot, and the now-unfettered ability of every German to vote according to his conscience, had the calculated effect. The elections shewed that the enormous prestige of the Emperor had won the Socialist vote, and the Catholic vote, and the votes of the Right and the Left, in support of his paramount authority. The English newspapers ceased from jeering; and the Pall Mall Gazette split subjunctives as well as infinitives in applause of success.
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