“He speaks like one’s own conscience!” said Caio and Tizio and also Sempronio.
“Hearken and obey Him, then,” invected Maria and Elena and also Margherita.
CHAPTER XVIII
Italy was not first in the heart of Hadrian. She was third. He served Her, because He saw Her instant need. The second of His loved lands did not know Herself to be in need of Him: hence, He offered Her no more than courtesy. He did not want America to tell Him not to monkey with the buzz-saw. And England was first. And what could He do for England? The thought, that He might do something, alone sustained Him now. Life among the millions of articulately-speaking men had become an ever-present horror to Him. He frequently wondered what prevented Him from hurling Himself from the windows on to the stones of Rome. He actually sent for a case of safety-razors, and banished knives from the pontifical apartments. “O for the wings, for the wings of a dove: then far away, far away, would I fly.” There was a boy named Roebuck who sang that, in New College Chapel in Commemoration week five and twenty years before. The golden voice, the incomparable young voice came back to Him in Golden Rome where He was longing to be at rest.
A scarlet arm held back the blue-linen curtain of the door, and Cardinal Leighton entered. “I think we missed this, Holy Father,” he said, and offered a more-than-a-month-old copy of the Catholic Hour.
Hadrian in a moment dragged Himself erect physically and psychically: He took the paper and read:
“We have received a long letter from ‘D. J.’ taking us to task for exposing George Arthur Rose in a way which he calls ‘savagely cruel.’ He says
‘I thank God that I cannot appreciate the humour which speaks gaily of a man enduring eighteen months of semi-starvation, and at the same time struggling hard to earn a livelihood by his pen—for the honesty of his stragglings I can vouch. Whatever his past may have been—and I believe that your article is in the main erroneous—surely it is better to leave it as past. As a convert, he had to endure for the faith that is in him. Once before in his chequered career, at a moment when he had a means of living by his own hands within his grasp, a gratuitous newspaper attack snatched from him the support which he had made himself to lean on. At the present time he is leading an existence which is bitter enough to himself and quite harmless (not to say beneficial) to others; and I feel compelled to tell you that I look upon your onslaught as both criminal and disgraceful.’
Another correspondent writes, ‘I was much grieved at your article called Strange Career etc. in your issue of Nov. 18th because I am a great admirer of some books which George Arthur Rose published before he was made Pope. Those books did more to convert me to Catholicism than any others and I am very sorry to read the account that you have printed of their author.’
Yet another correspondent writes, ‘It may be well to inform your readers that the Austin White who wrote the very offensive letters headed Rhypokondylose Religion in the Jecorian Courier some few years back is the George Arthur Rose alias the Pope of Rome about whom your readers were so amply enlightened in the columns of your issue of 18th November.’
In reply to ‘D. J.’ we may say that we hold in our hand a letter which Rose addressed to an excellent priest in 1898. It concludes ‘I regret for your sake the exposure which inevitably must take place when her brother-in-law, the bishop, becomes cognizant of the undue influence which you use in order to embezzle these sums from Lady Mostingham. I beg you to make amends and to withdraw from such degrading transactions before it is too late.’ If our correspondent ‘D. J.’ still thinks it was not advisable for us to savagely and cruelly denounce the author of that last letter, we can only say we differ from him.”
Hadrian read the screed with indignant scorn. It was the beastly English of the vulgar thing, more than the vile sentiments expressed, which put Him into such a violent rictus of contempt. He looked out of the window at nothing for a moment, to conceal His disgust. Finding that Cardinal Leighton waited, He controlled Himself; and turned round with a gaze of frigid inquiry.
“Yes?” He said.
“ ‘Would to Heaven that You would grant me a trifling favour,’ ” His Eminency quoted in Greek. It was a most artful and invariably successful dodge to approach the Pontiff in His favourite tongue. He recognized the quotation; and capped it with the succeeding verse.
“ ‘Tell me as quickly as you can; and I at once shall know.’ ”
“May I ask a question? Did You write that letter, Holy Father?”
“Which? The last? Yes.”
“What did you know?”
“Everything.”
“May I say that the amount of knowledge of men which You seem always to possess is quite extraordinary:” said the cardinal, blinking.
“No it is not. ‘To those who indeed suffer, Righteousness bringeth knowledge.’ ” the Pontiff quoted from Aischylos again. “ ‘The greater the detachment from the world, over worldly things the greater power is gained,’ some true poet sings. We never were ‘a man among men.’ We had five senses and We used them. And all the men whom We ever met habitually and voluntarily came and told Us their secrets. We never sought them. They were laid bare before Us. And Our senses perceived them. That is all.”
The pontifical voice was hard and cruel: the face was harder and more cruel and also more terrible. The very Presence was like a candent flame. Good honest innocent Leighton looked at Him as at something inhuman: but he persevered.
“Holiness, I want to go on. Do You know who wrote the other letters?”
“Oh yes. D. J. was another ‘excellent priest.’ He was in philosophy when We were in theology at Maryvale. Why you know him too, Leighton,—he took his B.A. with Ambrose.”
“What, ‘Gionde’? Yes, of course I knew him.”
“That’s the man. We have not heard from him for years: but he evidently thought it right to defend Us. Poor chap! A snub rewards him. The Catholic Hour ‘differs from him.’ . . . A tipsy publican wrote the second; and the third was written by a Jesuit jackal, in return for the custom of, and most likely at the dictation of, the very detestable scoundrel to whom We wrote the last.”
“What became of him? The bad priest I mean?”
“He ruined himself, as We predicted. He persisted in his career of crime till his bishop found him out. Then he was broken, and disappeared—Maison de santé or something of that sort for a time. He’s in one of the colonies now; and he might have been—— Lord Cardinal, We have said too much. It is not Our Will and pleasure to move in this matter.”
“But the advantage I derive from hearing Your Holiness—if it is not impertinent—Holiness. I venture to assure you of my eternal fidelity——”
Leighton stammered with emotion.
Hadrian shewed him no face: turned to the window which displayed the panorama of Intangible Rome; and presently was alone.
“God! God!” He exclaimed, shaking the paper with terrific violence. “Do you see this brutal cynical unrighteousness—prejudged,—condemned,—the mere suggestion of defence derided and fleered-at——in England, fair-minded England—England the land of the free——”
No: it was not England, but just a handful of the vicious vermin which infest her. England—the word summoned Him to His apostolature again. What was the mind of England now? That question occupied Him. He wished that England would declare Her mind to Him through ambassadors, the mind of the statesmen of England. He had no official acquaintance with any one of them. He could not ask for England’s confidence: for, being English, He knew that asking slams the door. Humanly speaking, He had nothing to guide Him in the cosmic crisis of the present, the crisis in which He was certain to be consulted—as a last resort—but certain to be consulted. Of that, He was convinced. A short calculation displayed Jupiter passing through Aries, which signified immense benefit to England. Oh, very good. Then what should be His course of action? He got up and went round the room, looking at the maps and noting them, until it seemed that His mental horizon expanded and enlarged,
and He had the whole of the orb of the earth within His vision. What should He say, or do, for England, when she was too shy, too proud, to give Him a sign as to what She wanted Him to say, or do? England, England!—“Land of hope and glory,—how shall We extol thee Who are born of thee?—wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set: God, Who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!”
He would say and do that which was given to Him to say or do. As an Englishman, He had His intuitions. And He required no confidences. England, the shy, the proud, should be served by Her shy proud son, the Servant of the servants of God. The divine afflatus of patriotism inspired Him, brightening His eyes, erecting His head. He sat down again: took His writing-board on His knees; and wrote. Anon, He rang the bell and gave some orders. Also, He sent some written slips of cyphers to the operators in the Vatican marconigraph office.
On the twenty-second of January, the Supreme Pontiff descended to the basilica of St. Peter-by-the-Vatican; and sang mass for the repose of the soul of Queen Victoria, the Great, the Good. The same day, the English newspapers announced that His Holiness had sent a cardinal-ablegate to place the Golden Rose, the pontifical tribute to virtuose queens, on Her Majesty’s tomb in the mausoleum at Frogmore.
CHAPTER XIX
The Italian Socialists having been won for Italy, and the German Socialists by the German Emperor, the British Socialists began to wonder where they themselves came in. The predilection for forming societies which is to be met-with among all the degenerate and hysterical, may assume different forms. Criminals unite in bands, as Lombroso expressly establishes. Hence the British Socialists (in their quandary) held fatuous meetings hoping to generate a policy in an atmosphere of hot envious man. They really did want to know their exact position: for, in some indefinable way, they were beginning to feel that they were by no means as necessary to the universe as they had imagined themselves to be. It seemed as though this planet (for one) were moving quite easily without them, and (what was more annoying) on a path which was quite strange to them, a comfortable path and a desirable. They felt that they were being left out in the cold; and, as their nature was, they looked about for some safe person on whom to void their spleen. They began with the Roman Pontiff. That an archaic potentate of His calibre, should prove to be fresh and actual and vigorous, struck them as something of a nuisance. They had deemed Him hardly worth consideration, a decayed relic of antiquity, useful perhaps as a monument of the bad old days when the world was drowned in damnable idolatry: but nothing more. That any man whose reputation so publicly had been besmirched as His had been, should dare to hold up his head, to live and move and have his being, to dispose of millions of money and of the minds of nations, struck them as simply atrocious. He had refused the honour of their alliance, had scorned their overtures with contemptuous silence. They would return Him scorn for scorn: they would shew Him what He had lost. If He flattered Himself that His so called Epistles to this that and the other would have any influence, the sooner He was undeceived the better. The Liblab Fellowship soon would let ‘an unhappy old drawler of platitudinous flapdoodle like Hadrian’ know His place, quoth the blameless Comrade Bob Matchwood. All the same, amid all the rhapsodic rhodomontade of sound and fury signifying nothing, there remained among the fellowshippers just enough intellect to perceive one thing. Comrade Frank Conollan put on his pince-nez; and, with a spasm of jerks and twitches, was delivered of the opinion that the Liblab Fellowship could not hope to recover anything like a respectable position in the popular estimation as long as it remained where it was. He said that to blink the fact, that Liblabbery had taken a false step in approaching the Pope of Rome, was not a bit of good. Liblabbery had courted a snub; and had been smitten with the snubbiest of snubs. If he might use a metaphorical expression, he would say that Liblabbery had been enticed into a bog and made to look unspeakably silly. If he might use a poetical expression from Shakespeare, he would say ‘like unback’d colts they pricked their ears, advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses, and calf-like follow’d through tooth’d briers, pricking goss, and thorns, which enter’d their frail skins, into the filthy mantled pool, where, dancing up to the chins, the foul lake o’er-stunk their feet.’
(It began to dawn upon the Liblabs that the Comrade was doing the very thing desired. He was leading up to the customary denunciation of some traitor. He was about to provide them with the name of the usual scape-goat. They prolonged pleased ears in his direction.)
He would go further. He would say, still using the expressions of the immortal bard of Avon, “Your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us.”
(This was something like! The meeting’s ears positively flapped.)
And then, being unable to keep-on his pince-nez any longer by reason of a steamed nose, he brought his climax to an abrupt term by demanding the instant and public expulsion of Comrade Jerry Sant. That was voted nem. con. The Liblab Fellowship shook-off the dust of its dirty feet at the traitor; and Comrade Mat Matchwood said some very slighting things about him in the Salpinx. No one is so facile and energetic about believing evil as a Pessimist, that is to say a Socialist; and, when one traitor is detected, what could be more natural than for others to be suspected. It happened so. The mutual jealousy, the flaring incompetency, the sordid selfishness, which always infected the socialist demagogues, and (of course) the essentially sandy foundation upon which the socialist system was based, led to further and more fatal dissensions. Suspicion mated with Baffled Purpose. Recrimination was the offspring of the match. The fellowshippers, who had connived at the scheme of Jerry Sant, found themselves accused as his accomplices, and denounced and expelled in turn. From dissension it was no more than one step to disunion. Each demagogue, fearful lest he should have to take up an honest trade for a livelihood, devoted persuasive loquacity to the attracting of personal supporters. Burnson battened on Battersea. West Ham went a-whoring after strange Bills. Glasgow got into the galley of Kerardy. And Devana succumbed to a split-thumb-nailed and anarchistic plumber. Schisms within schisms insued. Dens and caves received the remnants of the Liblab Fellowship. Mutual damnation was the order of the day. The Socialists were almost Christian. The ranks were thinned by internecine war. Then came desertions. Socialism didn’t pay; and socialists openly asked conservative agents for tory gold. When it was refused, they swore (after their kind). Labor (without the u) looked about for the patronage of Capital. And British Socialism was in a fair way to perish of its own radical fatuity, and instability.
Hadrian watched the process of disintegration from His tower in Rome, watched the natural absorption of the more respectable socialists by the more respectable community; and He was glad. Very soon now the silly obscene heresy would die and disappear, with the obsolete delusions of Gymnosophists, Anabaptists, Picards, Adamites and Turlupins. Hadrian was glad. Then came the Times, announcing that Australia, Canada, and South Africa had armed all healthy males between the ages of 17 and 50; and that England was mobilizing the sea-and-land-forces of her Empire. Now the whole world was in battle array. He took out His pyx again, and prayed the prayer of the Danaides, “O King of kings, Most Blessed of the blessed, Most Perfect Mighty One of the perfect, be persuaded and let this come to pass,—avert from Thy race the insolence of men who (for a reason) hate it; and plunge the black-benched pest into the dark abyss.” It was a pagan enough prayer for a Pope to utter. It was a fierce enough sentiment for an altruist to express. It was an entirely comprehensible suggestion of a misanthrope and misogynist, tired by, impatient of, armed against, the tiresome divarication of little silly people. The thing which troubled Him most was the irreconcilability of the King of Italy. He had tried hard to give Victor Emanuel to understand that, not rebuff but, welcome waited for him. He knew the benefits which co-operation of Pope and King would bring. Yet the expression of the Persian fatalist in Herodotus,—έχθιστη όδυνη πολλα ϕρουεουτα μηδενος κρατεειν—the bitterest of
all griefs, to see clearly and yet to be unable to do anything, might have stood as the motto of His whole mind, as often before in His life, so most emphatically now. He recalled the Cardinal of Caerleon.
The blameless Sant and his companion were in a pretty pickle. Expulsion from the Liblab Fellowship included, not only the withdrawal of funds but also, a threat of prosecution on a charge of obtaining money on false pretences. The last they could afford to laugh at. No English court of law could or would convict upon the evidence producible. The first was tiresome: but of course they had a little put by. And with regard to the future? Mrs. Crowe now was quite certain that Jerry had made a mess of things. She began to think with longing of her lodging-house. What was the good of staying on in Rome? Yes, and who was going to pay her expenses, she would like to know? She impatiently put that point before her paymaster. He did-on a forensic air; and asked for time to advise himself of the matter. She demanded how long he would require. He remarked on the feminine propensity for kicking a man who has been knocked down; and ramped and raved till he thoroughly frightened her. Your Pict is a truly awesome figure when he is red with damp rage. She shrank into a corner whimpering, for she thought he was going to strike her. Instead of that he cooled to sudden wheedling; and anon he cuddled her. She permitted. It was better than nothing; and she felt as though she really needed something of the sort. How could she so misunderstand him? Of course he was not going to desert her. They both were in the same boat; and must sink or swim together. For his part, he intended to swim. She might have known that he was not the man to give up when matters had proceeded so far. But, she urged, what could they do? Do? They could do a fair lot of things. To begin with, they could go and wait on a lot of they old cardinals and mak’ theirsels a nuisance. They went to Ragna, and told him very pretty stories. Their statements were as a treat of almonds to him: but he gave no sign of that. He was suave, polite: said that he would see what could be done; and bowed them away. They went to Whitehead and got no satisfaction. Caerleon thought that they had better let matters rest. Carvale denied himself to them. Sterling listened to them with judicial gravity and gave them no response. Semphill blazed at them; and dismissed them shattered as to their nerves. They returned to the Hotel Nike to wait for Ragna.
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