# Lord of the World/Book 1

BOOK I—THE ADVENT
CHAPTER I
I
Oliver Brand, the new member for Croydon (4), sat in his study, looking out of the window over the top of his typewriter.
His house stood facing northwards at the extreme end of a spur of the Surrey Hills, now cut and tunnelled out of all recognition; only to a Communist the view was an inspiriting one. Immediately below the wide windows the embanked ground fell away rapidly for perhaps a hundred feet, ending in a high wall, and beyond that the world and works of men were triumphant as far as eye could see. Two vast tracks like streaked race-courses, each not less than a quarter of a mile in width, and sunk twenty feet below the surface of the ground, swept up to a meeting a mile ahead at the huge junction. Of those, that on his left was the First Trunk road to Brighton, inscribed in capital letters in the Railroad Guide, that to the right the Second Trunk to the Tunbridge and Hastings district. Each was divided lengthways by a cement wall, on one side of which, on steel rails, ran the electric trams, and on the other lay the motor-track itself again divided into three, on which ran, first the Government coaches at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an hour, second the private motors at not more than sixty, third the cheap Government line at thirty, with stations ​every five miles. This was further bordered by a road confined to pedestrians, cyclists and ordinary cars on which no vehicle was allowed to move at more than twelve miles an hour.
Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house-roofs, with short towers here and there marking public buildings, from the Caterham district on the left to Croydon in front, all clear and bright in smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the low suburban hills against the April sky.
There was surprisingly little sound, considering the pressure of the population; and, with the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a train fled north or south, and the occasional sweet chord of the great motors as they neared or left the junction, there was little to be heard in this study except a smooth, soothing murmur that filled the air like the murmur of bees in a garden.
Oliver loved every hint of human life—all busy sights and sounds—and was listening now, smiling faintly to himself as he stared out into the clear air. Then he set his lips, laid his fingers on the keys once more, and went on speech-constructing.
He was very fortunate in the situation of his house. It stood in an angle of one of those huge spider-webs with which the country was covered, and for his purposes was all that he could expect. It was close enough to London to be extremely cheap, for all wealthy persons had retired at least a hundred miles from the throbbing heart of England; and yet it was as quiet as he could wish. He was within ten minutes of Westminster on the one side, and twenty minutes ​of the sea on the other: and his constituency lay before him like a raised map. Further, since the great London termini were but ten minutes away, there were at his disposal the First Trunk lines to every big town in England. For a politician of no great means, who was asked to speak at Edinburgh on one evening and in Marseilles on the next, he was as well placed as any man in Europe.
He was a pleasant-looking man, not much over thirty years old; black wire-haired, clean-shaven, thin, virile, magnetic, blue-eyed and white-skinned; and he appeared this day extremely content with himself and the world. His lips moved slightly as he worked, his eyes enlarged and diminished with excitement, and more than once he paused and stared out again, smiling and flushed.
Then a door opened; a middle-aged man came nervously in with a bundle of papers, laid them down on the table without a word, and turned to go out. Oliver lifted his hand for attention, snapped a lever, and spoke.
"Well, Mr. Phillips?" he said.
"There is news from the East, sir," said the secretary.
Oliver shot a glance sideways, and laid his hand on the bundle.
"Any complete message?" he asked.
"No, sir; it is interrupted again. Mr. Felsenburgh's name is mentioned."
Oliver did not seem to hear; he lifted the flimsy printed sheets with a sudden movement, and began turning them.
"The fourth from the top, Mr. Brand," said the secretary.
Oliver jerked his head impatiently, and the other went out as if at a signal.
The fourth sheet from the top, printed in red on green, ​seemed to absorb Oliver's attention altogether, for he read it through two or three times, leaning back motionless in his chair. Then he sighed, and stared again through the window.
Then once more the door opened, and a tall girl came in.
"Well, my dear?" she observed.
Oliver shook his head, with compressed lips.
"Nothing definite," he said. "Even less than usual. Listen."
He took up the green sheet and began to read aloud as the girl sat down in a window-seat on his left.
She was a very charming-looking creature, tall and slender, with serious, ardent grey eyes, firm red lips, and a beautiful carriage of head and shoulders. She had walked slowly across the room as Oliver took up the paper, and now sat back in her brown dress in a very graceful and stately attitude. She seemed to listen with a deliberate kind of patience; but her eyes flickered with interest.
"'Irkutsk—April fourteen—Yesterday—as—usual—But—rumoured—defection—from—Sufi—party—Troops—continue—gathering—Felsenburgh—addressed—Buddhist—crowd—Attempt—on—Llama—last—Friday—work—of—Anarchists—Felsenburgh—leaving—for—Moscow—as—arranged—he. . . . ' There—that is absolutely all," ended Oliver dispiritedly. "It's interrupted as usual."
The girl began to swing a foot.
"I don't understand in the least," she said. "Who is Felsenburgh, after all?"
"My dear child, that is what all the world is asking. Nothing is known except that he was included in the ​American deputation at the last moment. The Herald published his life last week; but it has been contradicted. It is certain that he is quite a young man, and that he has been quite obscure until now."
"Well, he is not obscure now," observed the girl.
"I know; it seems as if he were running the whole thing. One never hears a word of the others. It's lucky he's on the right side."
"And what do you think.?"
Oliver turned vacant eyes again out of the window.
"I think it is touch and go," he said. "The only remarkable thing is that here hardly anybody seems to realise it. It's too big for the imagination, I suppose. There is no doubt that the East has been preparing for a descent on Europe for these last five years. They have only been checked by America; and this is one last attempt to stop them. But why Felsenburgh should come to the front—" he broke off. "He must be a good linguist, at any rate. This is at least the fifth crowd he has addressed; perhaps he is just the American interpreter. Christ! I wonder who he is."
"Has he any other name?"
"Julian, I believe. One message said so."
"How did this come through?"
Oliver shook his head.
"Private enterprise," he said. "The European agencies have stopped work. Every telegraph station is guarded night and day. There are lines of volors strung out on every frontier. The Empire means to settle this business without us."
"And if it goes wrong?"
​"My dear Mabel—if hell breaks loose—" he threw out his hands deprecatingly.
"And what is the Government doing?"
"Working night and day; so is the rest of Europe. It'll be Armageddon with a vengeance if it comes to war."
"What chance do you see?"
"I see two chances," said Oliver slowly: "one, that they may be afraid of America, and may hold their hands from sheer fear; the other that they may be induced to hold their hands from charity; if only they can be made to understand that co-operation is the one hope of the world. But those damned religions of theirs——"
The girl sighed, and looked out again on to the wide plain of house-roofs below the window.
The situation was indeed as serious as it could be. That huge Empire, consisting of a federalism of States under the Son of Heaven (made possible by the merging of the Japanese and Chinese dynasties and the fall of Russia), had been consolidating its forces and learning its own power during the last thirty-five years, ever since, in fact, it had laid its lean yellow hands upon Australia and India. While the rest of the world had learned the folly of war, ever since the fall of the Russian republic under the combined attack of the yellow races, the last had grasped its possibilities. It seemed now as if the civilisation of the last century was to be swept back once more into chaos. It was not that the mob of the East cared very greatly; it was their rulers who had begun to stretch themselves after an almost eternal lethargy, and it was hard to imagine how they could be checked at this point. There was a touch of grimness too in the rumour that religious fanaticism was behind the ​movement, and that the patient East proposed at last to proselytise by the modern equivalents of fire and sword those who had laid aside for the most part all religious beliefs except that in Humanity. To Oliver it was simply maddening. As he looked from his window and saw that vast limit of London laid peaceably before him, as his imagination ran out over Europe and saw everywhere that steady triumph of common sense and fact over the wild fairy-stories of Christianity, it seemed intolerable that there should be even a possibility that all this should be swept back again into the barbarous turmoil of sects and dogmas; for no less than this would be the result if the East laid hands on Europe. Even Catholicism would revive, he told himself, that strange faith that had blazed so often as persecution had been dashed to quench it; and, of all forms of faith, to Oliver's mind Catholicism was the most grotesque and enslaving. And the prospect of all this honestly troubled him, far more than the thought of the physical catastrophe and bloodshed that would fall on Europe with the advent of the East. There was but one hope on the religious side, as he had told Mabel a dozen times, and that was that the Quietistic Pantheism which for the last century had made such giant strides in East and West alike, among Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, Confucianists and the rest, should avail to check the supernatural frenzy that inspired their exoteric brethren. Pantheism, he understood, was what he held himself; for him "God" was the developing sum of created life, and impersonal Unity was the essence of His being; competition then was the great heresy that set men one against another and delayed all progress; for, to his mind, ​progress lay in the merging of the individual in the family, of the family in the commonwealth, of the commonwealth in the continent, and of the continent in the world. Finally, the world itself at any moment was no more than the mood of impersonal life. It was, in fact, the Catholic idea with the supernatural left out, a union of earthly fortunes, an abandonment of individualism on the one side, and of supernaturalism on the other. It was treason to appeal from God Immanent to God Transcendent; there was no God transcendent; God, so far as He could be known, was man.
Yet these two, husband and wife after a fashion—for they had entered into that terminable contract now recognised explicitly by the State—these two were very far from sharing in the usual heavy dulness of mere materialists. The world, for them, beat with one ardent life blossoming in flower and beast and man, a torrent of beautiful vigour flowing from a deep source and irrigating all that moved or felt. Its romance was the more appreciable because it was comprehensible to the minds that sprang from it; there were mysteries in it, but mysteries that enticed rather than baffled, for they unfolded new glories with every discovery that man could make; even inanimate objects, the fossil, the electric current, the far-off stars, these were dust thrown off by the Spirit of the World—fragrant with His Presence and eloquent of His Nature. For example, the announcement made by Klein, the astronomer, twenty years before, that the inhabitation of certain planets had become a certified fact—how vastly this had altered men's views of themselves. But the one condition of progress and the building of Jerusalem, on the planet that happened to be men's dwelling place, was peace, not the sword which Christ ​brought or that which Mahomet wielded; but peace that arose from, not passed, understanding; the peace that sprang from a knowledge that man was all and was able to develop himself only by sympathy with his fellows. To Oliver and his wife, then, the last century seemed like a revelation; little by little the old superstitions had died, and the new light broadened; the Spirit of the World had roused Himself, the sun had dawned in the west; and now with horror and loathing they had seen the clouds gather once more in the quarter whence all superstition had had its birth.
Mabel got up presently and came across to her husband.
"My dear," she said, "you must not be downhearted. It all may pass as it passed before. It is a great thing that they are listening to America at all. And this Mr. Felsenburgh seems to be on the right side."
Oliver took her hand and kissed it.
II
Oliver seemed altogether depressed at breakfast, half an hour later. His mother, an old lady of nearly eighty, who never appeared till noon, seemed to see it at once, for after a look or two at him and a word, she subsided into silence behind her plate.
It was a pleasant little room in which they sat, immediately behind Oliver's own, and was furnished, according to universal custom, in light green. Its windows looked out upon a strip of garden at the back, and the high creeper-grown ​wall that separated that domain from the next. The furniture, too, was of the usual sort; a sensible round table stood in the middle, with three tall arm-chairs, with the proper angles and rests, drawn up to it; and the centre of it, resting apparently on a broad round column, held the dishes. It was thirty years now since the practice of placing the dining-room above the kitchen, and of raising and lowering the courses by hydraulic power into the centre of the dining-table, had become universal in the houses of the well-to-do. The floor consisted entirely of the asbestos cork preparation invented in America, noiseless, clean, and pleasant to both foot and eye.
Mabel broke the silence.
"And your speech to-morrow?" she asked, taking up her fork.
Oliver brightened a little, and began to discourse.
It seemed that Birmingham was beginning to fret. They were crying out once more for free trade with America: European facilities were not enough, and it was Oliver's business to keep them quiet. It was useless, he proposed to tell them, to agitate until the Eastern business was settled: they must not bother the Government with such details just now. He was to tell them, too, that the Government was wholly on their side; that it was bound to come soon.
"They are pig-headed," he added fiercely; "pig-headed and selfish; they are like children who cry for food ten minutes before dinner-time: it is bound to come if they will wait a little."
"And you will tell them so?"
"That they are pig-headed? Certainly."
​Mabel looked at her husband with a pleased twinkle in her eyes. She knew perfectly well that his popularity rested largely on his outspokenness: folks liked to be scolded and abused by a genial bold man who danced and gesticulated in a magnetic fury; she liked it herself.
"How shall you go?" she asked.
"Volor. I shall catch the eighteen o'clock at Blackfriars; the meeting is at nineteen, and I shall be back at twenty-one."
He addressed himself vigorously to his entrée, and his mother looked up with a patient, old-woman smile.
Mabel began to drum her fingers softly on the damask.
"Please make haste, my dear," she said; "I have to be at Brighton at three."
Oliver gulped his last mouthful, pushed his plate over the line, glanced to see if all plates were there, and then put his hand beneath the table.
Instantly, without a sound, the centre-piece vanished, and the three waited unconcernedly while the clink of dishes came from beneath.
Old Mrs. Brand was a hale-looking old lady, rosy and wrinkled, with the mantilla head-dress of fifty years ago; but she, too, looked a little depressed this morning. The entrée was not very successful, she thought; the new foodstuff was not up to the old, it was a trifle gritty: she would see about it afterwards. There was a clink, a soft sound like a push, and the centre-piece snapped into its place, bearing an admirable imitation of a roasted fowl.
Oliver and his wife were alone again for a minute or two after breakfast before Mabel started down the path to ​catch the 14½ o'clock 4th grade sub-trunk line to the junction.
"What's the matter with mother?" he said.
"Oh! it's the food-stuff again: she's never got accustomed to it; she says it doesn't suit her."
"Nothing else?"
"No, my dear, I am sure of it. She hasn't said a word lately."
Oliver watched his wife go down the path, reassured. He had been a little troubled once or twice lately by an odd word or two that his mother had let fall. She had been brought up a Christian for a few years, and it seemed to him sometimes as if it had left a taint. There was an old "Garden of the Soul" that she liked to keep by her, though she always protested with an appearance of scorn that it was nothing but nonsense. Still, Oliver would have preferred that she had burned it: superstition was a desperate thing for retaining life, and, as the brain weakened, might conceivably reassert itself. Christianity was both wild and dull, he told himself, wild because of its obvious grotesqueness and impossibility, and dull because it was so utterly apart from the exhilarating stream of human life; it crept dustily about still, he knew, in little dark churches here and there; it screamed with hysterical sentimentality in Westminster Cathedral which he had once entered and looked upon with a kind of disgusted fury; it gabbled strange, false words to the incompetent and the old and the halfwitted. But it would be too dreadful if his own mother ever looked upon it again with favour.
Oliver himself, ever since he could remember, had been violently opposed to the concessions to Rome and Ireland. ​It was intolerable that these two places should be definitely yielded up to this foolish, treacherous nonsense: they were hot-beds of sedition; plague-spots on the face of humanity. He had never agreed with those who said that it was better that all the poison of the West should be gathered rather than dispersed. But, at any rate, there it was. Rome had been given up wholly to that old man in white in exchange for all the parish churches and cathedrals of Italy, and it was understood that mediæval darkness reigned there supreme; and Ireland, after receiving Home Rule thirty years before, had declared for Catholicism, and opened her arms to Individualism in its most virulent form. England had laughed and assented, for she was saved from a quantity of agitation by the immediate departure of half her Catholic population for that island, and had, consistently with her Communist-colonial policy, granted every facility for Individualism to reduce itself there ad absurdum. All kinds of funny things were happening there: Oliver had read with a bitter amusement of new appearances there, of a Woman in Blue and shrines raised where her feet had rested; but he was scarcely amused at Rome, for the movement to Turin of the Italian Government had deprived the Republic of quite a quantity of sentimental prestige, and had haloed the old religious nonsense with all the meretriciousness of historical association. However, it obviously could not last much longer: the world was beginning to understand at last.
He stood a moment or two at the door after his wife had gone, drinking in reassurance from that glorious vision of solid sense that spread itself before his eyes: the endless house-roofs; the high glass vaults of the public baths and ​gymnasiums; the pinnacled schools where Citizenship was taught each morning; the spider-like cranes and scaffoldings that rose here and there; and even the few pricking spires did not disconcert him. There it stretched away into the grey haze of London, really beautiful, this vast hive of men and women who had learned at least the primary lesson of the gospel that there was no God but man, no priest but the politician, no prophet but the schoolmaster.
Then he went back once more to his speech-constructing.
Mabel, too, was a little thoughtful as she sat with her paper on her lap, spinning down the broad line to Brighton. This Eastern news was more disconcerting to her than she allowed her husband to see; yet it seemed incredible that there could be any real danger of invasion. This Western life was so sensible and peaceful; folks had their feet at last upon the rock, and it was unthinkable that they could ever be forced back on to the mud-flats: it was contrary to the whole law of development. Yet she could not but recognise that catastrophe seemed one of nature's methods. . . .
She sat very quiet, glancing once or twice at the meagre little scrap of news, and read the leading article upon it: that too seemed significant of dismay. A couple of men were talking in the half-compartment beyond on the same subject; one described the Government engineering works that he had visited, the breathless haste that dominated them; the other put in interrogations and questions. There was not much comfort there. There were no windows through which she could look; on the main lines the speed was too great for the eyes; the long compartment flooded with soft ​light bounded her horizon. She stared at the moulded white ceiling, the delicious oak-framed paintings, the deep spring-seats, the mellow globes overhead that poured out radiance, at a mother and child diagonally opposite her. Then the great chord sounded; the faint vibration increased ever so slightly; and an instant later the automatic doors ran back, and she stepped out on to the platform of Brighton station.
As she went down the steps leading to the station square she noticed a priest going before her. He seemed a very upright and sturdy old man, for though his hair was white he walked steadily and strongly. At the foot of the steps he stopped and half turned, and then, to her surprise, she saw that his face was that of a young man, fine-featured and strong, with black eyebrows and very bright grey eyes. Then she passed on and began to cross the square in the direction of her aunt's house.
Then without the slightest warning, except one shrill hoot from overhead, a number of things happened.
A great shadow whirled across the sunlight at her feet, a sound of rending tore the air, and a noise like a giant's sigh; and, as she stopped bewildered, with a noise like ten thousand smashed kettles, a huge thing crashed on the rubber pavement before her, where it lay, filling half the square, writhing long wings on its upper side that beat and whirled like the flappers of some ghastly extinct monster, pouring out human screams, and beginning almost instantly to crawl with broken life.
Mabel scarcely knew what happened next; but she found herself a moment later forced forward by some violent pressure from behind, till she stood shaking from head to foot, ​with some kind of smashed body of a man moaning and stretching at her feet. There was a sort of articulate language coming from it; she caught distinctly the names of Jesus and Mary; then a voice hissed suddenly in her ears:
"Let me through. I am a priest."
She stood there a moment longer, dazed by the suddenness of the whole affair, and watched almost unintelligently the grey-haired young priest on his knees, with his coat torn open, and a crucifix out; she saw him bend close, wave his hand in a swift sign, and heard a murmur of a language she did not know. Then he was up again, holding the crucifix before him, and she saw him begin to move forward into the midst of the red-flooded pavement, looking this way and that as if for a signal. Down the steps of the great hospital on her right came figures running now, hatless, each carrying what looked like an old-fashioned camera. She knew what those men were, and her heart leaped in relief. They were the ministers of euthanasia. Then she felt herself taken by the shoulder and pulled back, and immediately found herself in the front rank of a crowd that was swaying and crying out, and behind a line of police and civilians who had formed themselves into a cordon to keep the pressure back.
III
Oliver was in a panic of terror as his mother, half an hour later, ran in with the news that one of the Government volors had fallen in the station square at Brighton just after the 14½ train had discharged its passengers. He ​knew quite well what that meant, for he remembered one such accident ten years before, just after the law forbidding private volors had been passed. It meant that every living creature in it was killed and probably many more in the place where it fell—and what then? The message was clear enough; she would certainly be in the square at that time.
He sent a desperate wire to her aunt asking for news; and sat, shaking in his chair, awaiting the answer. His mother sat by him.
"Please God—" she sobbed out once, and stopped confounded as he turned on her.
But Fate was merciful, and three minutes before Mr. Phillips toiled up the path with the answer, Mabel herself came into the room, rather pale and smiling.
"Christ!" cried Oliver, and gave one huge sob as he sprang up.
She had not a great deal to tell him. There was no explanation of the disaster published as yet; it seemed that the wings on one side had simply ceased to work.
She described the shadow, the hiss of sound, and the crash. Then she stopped.
"Well, my dear?" said her husband, still rather white beneath the eyes as he sat close to her patting her hand.
"There was a priest there," said Mabel. "I saw him before, at the station."
Oliver gave a little hysterical snort of laughter.
"He was on his knees at once," she said, "with his crucifix, even before the doctors came. My dear, do people really believe all that?"
"Why, they think they do," said her husband.
​"It was all so—so sudden; and there he was, just as if he had been expecting it all. Oliver, how can they?"
"Why, people will believe anything if they begin early enough."
"And the man seemed to believe it, too—the dying man, I mean. I saw his eyes."
She stopped.
"Well, my dear?"
"Oliver, what do you say to people when they are dying?"
"Say! Why, nothing! What can I say? But I don't think I've ever seen any one die."
"Nor have I till to-day," said the girl, and shivered a little. "The euthanasia people were soon at work."
Oliver took her hand gently.
"My darling, it must have been frightful. Why, you're trembling still."
"No; but listen. . . . You know, if I had had anything to say I could have said it too. They were all just in front of me: I wondered; then I knew I hadn't. I couldn't possibly have talked about Humanity."
"My dear, it's all very sad; but you know it doesn't really matter. It's all over."
"And—and they've just stopped?"
"Why, yes."
Mabel compressed her lips a little; then she sighed. She had an agitated sort of meditation in the train. She knew perfectly that it was sheer nerves; but she could not just yet shake them off. As she had said, it was the first time she had seen death.
"And that priest—that priest doesn't think so?"
"My dear, I'll tell you what he believes. He believes that ​that man whom he showed the crucifix to, and said those words over, is alive somewhere, in spite of his brain being dead: he is not quite sure where; but he is either in a kind of smelting works being slowly burned; or, if he is very lucky, and that piece of wood took effect, he is somewhere beyond the clouds, before Three Persons who are only One although They are Three; that there are quantities of other people there, a Woman in Blue, a great many others in white with their heads under their arms, and still more with their heads on one side; and that they've all got harps and go on singing for ever and ever, and walking about on the clouds, and liking it very much indeed. He thinks, too, that all these nice people are perpetually looking down upon the aforesaid smelting-works, and praising the Three Great Persons for making them. That's what the priest believes. Now you know it's not likely; that kind of thing may be very nice, but it isn't true."
Mabel smiled pleasantly. She had never heard it put so well.
"No, my dear, you're quite right. That sort of thing isn't true. How can he believe it? He looked quite intelligent!"
"My dear girl, if I had told you in your cradle that the moon was green cheese, and had hammered at you ever since, every day and all day, that it was, you'd very nearly believe it by now. Why, you know in your heart that the euthanatisers are the real priests. Of course you do."
Mabel sighed with satisfaction and stood up.
"Oliver, you're a most comforting person. I do like you! There! I must go to my room: I'm all shaky still."
Half across the room she stopped and put out a shoe.
​"Why—" she began faintly.
There was a curious rusty-looking splash upon it; and her husband saw her turn white. He rose abruptly.
"My dear," he said, "don't be foolish."
She looked at him, smiled bravely, and went out.
When she was gone, he still sat on a moment where she had left him. Dear me! how pleased he was! He did not like to think of what life would have been without her. He had known her since she was twelve—that was seven years ago—and last year they had gone together to the district official to make their contract. She had really become very necessary to him. Of course the world could get on without her, and he supposed that he could too; but he did not want to have to try. He knew perfectly well, for it was his creed of human love, that there was between them a double affection, of mind as well as body; and there was absolutely nothing else: but he loved her quick intuitions, and to hear his own thought echoed so perfectly. It was like two flames added together to make a third taller than either: of course one flame could burn without the other—in fact, one would have to, one day—but meantime the warmth and light were exhilarating. Yes, he was delighted that she happened to be clear of the falling volor.
He gave no more thought to his exposition of the Christian creed; it was a mere commonplace to him that Catholics believed that kind of thing; it was no more blasphemous to his mind so to describe it, than it would be to laugh at a Fijian idol with mother-of-pearl eyes, and a horse-hair wig; it was simply impossible to treat it seriously. He, too, had wondered once or twice in his life how human beings ​could believe such rubbish; but psychology had helped him, and he knew now well enough that suggestion will do almost anything. And it was this hateful thing that had so long restrained the euthanasia movement with all its splendid mercy.
His brows wrinkled a little as he remembered his mother's exclamation, "Please God"; then he smiled at the poor old thing and her pathetic childishness, and turned once more to his table, thinking in spite of himself of his wife's hesitation as she had seen the splash of blood on her shoe. Blood! Yes; that was as much a fact as anything else. How was it to be dealt with? Why, by the glorious creed of Humanity—that splendid God who died and rose again ten thousand times a day, who had died daily like the old cracked fanatic Saul of Tarsus, ever since the world began, and who rose again, not once like the Carpenter's Son, but with every child that came into the world. That was the answer; and was it not overwhelmingly sufficient?
Mr. Phillips came in an hour later with another bundle of papers.
CHAPTER II
I
Percy Franklin's correspondence with the Cardinal-Protector of England occupied him directly for at least two hours every day, and for nearly eight hours indirectly.
For the past eight years the methods of the Holy See had once more been revised with a view to modern needs, and now every important province throughout the world possessed not only an administrative metropolitan but a representative in Rome whose business it was to be in touch with the Pope on the one side and the people he represented on the other. In other words, centralisation had gone forward rapidly, in accordance with the laws of life; and, with centralisation, freedom of method and expansion of power. England's Cardinal-Protector was one Abbot Martin, a Benedictine, and it was Percy's business, as of a dozen more bishops, priests and laymen (with whom, by the way, he was forbidden to hold any formal consultation), to write a long daily letter to him on affairs that came under his notice.
It was a curious life, therefore, that Percy led. He had a couple of rooms assigned to him in Archbishop's House at Westminster, and was attached loosely to the Cathedral staff, although with considerable liberty. He rose early, and went to meditation for an hour, after which he said his mass. He took his coffee soon after, said a little office, and then settled down to map out his letter. At ten o'clock he ​was ready to receive callers, and till noon he was generally busy with both those who came to see him on their own responsibility and his staff of half-a-dozen reporters whose business it was to bring him marked paragraphs in the newspapers and their own comments. He then breakfasted with the other priests in the house, and set out soon after to call on people whose opinion was necessary, returning for a cup of tea soon after sixteen o'clock. Then he settled down, after the rest of his office and a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, to compose his letter, which though short, needed a great deal of care and sifting. After dinner he made a few notes for next day, received visitors again, and went to bed soon after twenty-two o'clock. Twice a week it was his business to assist at Vespers in the afternoon, and he usually sang high mass on Saturdays.
It was, therefore, a curiously distracting life, with peculiar dangers.
It was one day, a week or two after his visit to Brighton, that he was just finishing his letter, when his servant looked in to tell him that Father Francis was below.
"In ten minutes," said Percy, without looking up.
He snapped off his last lines, drew out the sheet, and settled down to read it over, translating it unconsciously from Latin to English.
"Westminster, May 14th.
"Eminence: Since yesterday I have a little more information. It appears certain that the Bill establishing Esperanto for all State purposes will be brought in in June. I have had this from Johnson. This, as I have pointed out before, is the very last stone in our consolidation with the continent, which, at present, is to be regretted. . . . A great access of Jews to Freemasonry is to be expected; ​hitherto they have held aloof to some extent, but the 'abolition of the Idea of God' is tending to draw in those Jews, now greatly on the increase once more, who repudiate all notion of a personal Messiah. It is 'Humanity' here, too, that is at work. To-day I heard the Rabbi Simeon speak to this effect in the City, and was impressed by the applause he received. . . . Yet among others an expectation is growing that a man will presently be found to lead the Communist movement and unite their forces more closely. I enclose a verbose cutting from the New People to that effect; and it is echoed everywhere. They say that the cause must give birth to one such soon; that they have had prophets and precursors for a hundred years past, and lately a cessation of them. It is strange how this coincides superficially with Christian ideas. Your Eminence will observe that a simile of the 'ninth wave' is used with some eloquence. . . . I hear to-day of the secession of an old Catholic family, the Wargraves of Norfolk, with their chaplain Micklem, who it seems has been busy in this direction for some while. The Epoch announces it with satisfaction, owing to the peculiar circumstances; but unhappily such events are not uncommon now. . . . There is much distrust among the laity. Seven priests in Westminster diocese have left us within the last three months; on the other hand, I have pleasure in telling your Eminence that his Grace received into Catholic Communion this morning the ex-Anglican Bishop of Carlisle, with half-a-dozen of his clergy. This has been expected for some weeks past. I append also cuttings from the Tribune, the London Trumpet, and the Observer, with my comments upon them. Your Eminence will see how great the excitement is with regard to the last.
"Recommendation. That formal excommunication of the Wargraves and these eight priests should be issued in Norfolk and Westminster respectively, and no further notice taken."
​Percy laid down the sheet, gathered up the half dozen other papers that contained his extracts and running commentary, signed the last, and slipped the whole into the printed envelope that lay ready.
Then he took up his biretta and went to the lift.
The moment he came into the glass-doored parlour he saw that the crisis was come, if not passed already. Father Francis looked miserably ill, but there was a curious hardness, too, about his eyes and mouth, as he stood waiting. He shook his head abruptly.
"I have come to say good-bye, father. I can bear it no more."
Percy was careful to show no emotion at all. He made a little sign to a chair, and himself sat down too.
"It is an end of everything," said the other again in a perfectly steady voice. "I believe nothing. I have believed nothing for a year now."
"You have felt nothing, you mean," said Percy.
"That won't do, father," went on the other. "I tell you there is nothing left. I can't even argue now. It is just good-bye."
Percy had nothing to say. He had talked to this man during a period of over eight months, ever since Father Francis had first confided in him that his faith was going. He understood perfectly what a strain it had been; he felt bitterly compassionate towards this poor creature who had become caught up somehow into the dizzy triumphant whirl of the New Humanity. External facts were horribly strong just now; and faith, except to one who had learned that Will and Grace were all and emotion nothing, was as ​a child crawling about in the midst of some huge machinery: it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of steel to keep steady. It was hard to know where blame could be assigned; yet Percy's faith told him that there was blame due. In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy. And as regards Father Francis's personal responsibility, he could not help feeling that the other had allowed ceremonial to play too great a part in his religion, and prayer too little. In him the external had absorbed the internal.
So he did not allow his sympathy to show itself in his bright eyes.
"You think it my fault, of course," said the other sharply.
"My dear father," said Percy, motionless in his chair, "I know it is your fault. Listen to me. You say Christianity is absurd and impossible. Now, you know, it cannot be that! It may be untrue—I am not speaking of that now, even though I am perfectly certain that it is absolutely true—but it cannot be absurd so long as educated and virtuous people continue to hold it. To say that it is absurd is simple pride; it is to dismiss all who believe in it as not merely mistaken, but unintelligent as well——"
"Very well, then," interrupted the other; "then suppose I withdraw that, and simply say that I do not believe it to be true."
​"You do not withdraw it," continued Percy serenely; "you still really believe it to be absurd: you have told me so a dozen times. Well, I repeat, that is pride, and quite sufficient to account for it all. It is the moral attitude that matters. There may be other things too——"
Father Francis looked up sharply.
"Oh! the old story! " he said sneeringly.
"If you tell me on your word of honour that there is no woman in the case, or no particular programme of sin you propose to work out, I shall believe you. But it is an old story, as you say."
"I swear to you there is not," cried the other.
"Thank God then!" said Percy. "There are fewer obstacles to a return of faith."
There was silence for a moment after that. Percy had really no more to say. He had talked to him of the inner life again and again, in which verities are seen to be true, and acts of faith are ratified; he had urged prayer and humility till he was almost weary of the names; and had been met by the retort that this was to advise sheer self-hypnotism; and he had despaired of making clear to one who did not see it for himself that while Love and Faith may be called self-hypnotism from one angle, yet from another they are as much realities as, for example, artistic faculties, and need similar cultivation; that they produce a conviction that they are convictions, that they handle and taste things which when handled and tasted are overwhelmingly more real and objective than the things of sense. Evidences seemed to mean nothing to this man.
So he was silent now, chilled himself by the presence of this crisis, looking unseeingly out upon the plain, little old-​world parlour, its tall window, its strip of matting, conscious chiefly of the dreary hopelessness of this human brother of his who had eyes but did not see, ears and was deaf. He wished he would say good-bye, and go. There was no more to be done.
Father Francis, who had been sitting in a lax kind of huddle, seemed to know his thoughts, and sat up suddenly.
"You are tired of me," he said. "I will go."
"I am not tired of you, my dear father," said Percy simply. "I am only terribly sorry. You see I know that it is all true."
The other looked at him heavily.
"And I know that it is not," he said. "It is very beautiful; I wish I could believe it. I don't think I shall be ever happy again—but—but there it is."
Percy sighed. He had told him so often that the heart is as divine a gift as the mind, and that to neglect it in the search for God is to seek ruin, but this priest had scarcely seen the application to himself. He had answered with the old psychological arguments that the suggestions of education accounted for everything.
"I suppose you will cast me off," said the other.
"It is you who are leaving me," said Percy. "I cannot follow, if you mean that."
"But—but cannot we be friends?"
A sudden heat touched the elder priest's heart.
"Friends?" he said. "Is sentimentality all you mean by friendship? What kind of friends can we be?"
The other's face became suddenly heavy.
"I thought so."
"John!" cried Percy. "You see that, do you not? How ​can we pretend anything when you do not believe in God? For I do you the honour of thinking that you do not."
Francis sprang up.
"Well—" he snapped. "I could not have believed—I am going."
He wheeled towards the door.
"John!" said Percy again. "Are you going like this? Can you not shake hands?"
The other wheeled again, with heavy anger in his face.
"Why, you said you could not be friends with me!"
Percy's mouth opened. Then he understood, and smiled.
"Oh! that is all you mean by friendship, is it?—I beg your pardon. Oh! we can be polite to one another, if you like."
He still stood holding out his hand. Father Francis looked at it a moment, his lips shook: then once more he turned, and went out without a word.
II
Percy stood motionless until he heard the automatic bell outside tell him that Father Francis was really gone, then he went out himself and turned towards the long passage leading to the Cathedral. As he passed out through the sacristy he heard far in front the murmur of an organ, and on coming through into the chapel used as a parish church he perceived that Vespers were not yet over in the great choir. He came straight down the aisle, turned to the right, crossed the centre and knelt down.
It was drawing on towards sunset, and the huge dark place was lighted here and there by patches of ruddy Lon- ​don light that lay on the gorgeous marble and gildings finished at last by a wealthy convert. In front of him rose up the choir, with a line of white surpliced and furred canons on either side, and the vast baldachino in the midst, beneath which burned the six lights as they had burned day by day for more than a century; behind that again lay the high line of the apse-choir with the dim, window-pierced vault above where Christ reigned in majesty. He let his eyes wander round for a few moments before beginning his deliberate prayer, drinking in the glory of the place, listening to the thunderous chorus, the peal of the organ, and the thin mellow voice of the priest. There on the left shone the refracted glow of the lamps that burned before the Lord in the Sacrament, on the right a dozen candles winked here and there at the foot of the gaunt images, high overhead hung the gigantic cross with that lean, emaciated Poor Man Who called all who looked on Him to the embraces of a God.
Then he hid his face in his hands, drew a couple of long breaths, and set to work.
He began, as his custom was in mental prayer, by a deliberate act of self-exclusion from the world of sense. Under the image of sinking beneath a surface he forced himself downwards and inwards, till the peal of the organ, the shuffle of footsteps, the rigidity of the chair-back beneath his wrists—all seemed apart and external, and he was left a single person with a beating heart, an intellect that suggested image after image, and emotions that were too languid to stir themselves. Then he made his second descent, renounced all that he possessed and was, and became conscious that even the body was left behind, and that his mind ​and heart, awed by the Presence in which they found themselves, clung close and obedient to the will which was their lord and protector. He drew another long breath, or two, as he felt that Presence surge about him; he repeated a few mechanical words, and sank to that peace which follows the relinquishment of thought.
There he rested for a while. Far above him sounded the ecstatic music, the cry of trumpets and the shrilling of the flutes; but they were as insignificant street-noises to one who was falling asleep. He was within the veil of things now, beyond the barriers of sense and reflection, in that secret place to which he had learned the road by endless effort, in that strange region where realities are evident, where perceptions go to and fro with the swiftness of light, where the swaying will catches now this, now that act, moulds it and speeds it; where all things meet, where truth is known and handled and tasted, where God Immanent is one with God Transcendent, where the meaning of the external world is evident through its inner side, and the Church and its mysteries are seen from within a haze of glory.
So he lay a few moments, absorbing and resting.
Then he aroused himself to consciousness and began to speak.
"Lord, I am here, and Thou art here. I know Thee. There is nothing else but Thou and I. . . . I lay this all in Thy hands—Thy apostate priest, Thy people, the world, and myself. I spread it before Thee—I spread it before Thee."
He paused, poised in the act, till all of which he thought lay like a plain before a peak.
​. . . "Myself, Lord—there but for Thy grace should I be going, in darkness and misery. It is Thou Who dost preserve me. Maintain and finish Thy work within my soul. Let me not falter for one instant. If Thou withdraw Thy hand I fall into utter nothingness."
So his soul stood a moment, with outstretched appealing hands, helpless and confident. Then the will flickered in self-consciousness, and he repeated acts of faith, hope and love to steady it. Then he drew another long breath, feeling the Presence tingle and shake about him, and began again.
"Lord; look on Thy people. Many are falling from Thee. Ne in æternum irascaris nobis. Ne in æternum irascaris nobis. . . . I unite myself with all saints and angels and Mary Queen of Heaven; look on them and me, and hear us. Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam. Thy light and Thy truth! Lay not on us heavier burdens than we can bear. Lord, why dost Thou not speak!"
He writhed himself forward in a passion of expectant desire, hearing his muscles crack in the effort. Once more he relaxed himself; and the swift play of wordless acts began which he knew to be the very heart of prayer. The eyes of his soul flew hither and thither, from Calvary to heaven and back again to the tossing troubled earth. He saw Christ dying of desolation while the earth rocked and groaned; Christ reigning as a priest upon His Throne in robes of light, Christ patient and inexorably silent within the Sacramental species; and to each in turn he directed the eyes of the Eternal Father. . . .
Then he waited for communications, and they came, so soft and delicate, passing like shadows, that his will ​sweated blood and tears in the effort to catch and fix them and correspond. . . .
He saw the Body Mystical in its agony, strained over the world as on a cross, silent with pain; he saw this and that nerve wrenched and twisted, till pain presented it to himself as under the guise of flashes of colour; he saw the life-blood drop by drop run down from His head and hands and feet. The world was gathered mocking and good-humoured beneath. "He saved others: Himself He cannot save. . . . Let Christ come down from the Cross and we will believe." Far away behind bushes and in holes of the ground the friends of Jesus peeped and sobbed; Mary herself was silent, pierced by seven swords; the disciple whom He loved had no words of comfort.
He saw, too, how no word would be spoken from heaven; the angels themselves were bidden to put sword into sheath, and wait on the eternal patience of God, for the agony was hardly yet begun; there were a thousand horrors yet before the end could come, that final sum of crucifixion. . . . He must wait and watch, content to stand there and do nothing; and the Resurrection must seem to him no more than a dreamed-of hope. There was the Sabbath yet to come, while the Body Mystical must lie in its sepulchre cut off from light, and even the dignity of the Cross must be withdrawn and the knowledge that Jesus lived. That inner world, to which by long effort he had learned the way, was all alight with agony; it was bitter as brine, it was of that pale luminosity that is the utmost product of pain, it hummed in his ears with a note that rose to a scream. . . it pressed upon him, penetrated him, stretched him as on a rack. . . . And with that his will grew sick and nerveless.
​"Lord! I cannot bear it!" he moaned. . . .
In an instant he was back again, drawing long breaths of misery. He passed his tongue over his lips, and opened his eyes on the darkening apse before him. The organ was silent now, and the choir was gone, and the lights out. The sunset colour, too, had faded from the walls, and grim cold faces looked down on him from wall and vault. He was back again on the surface of life; the vision had melted; he scarcely knew what it was that he had seen.
But he must gather up the threads, and by sheer effort absorb them. He must pay his duty, too, to the Lord that gave Himself to the senses as well as to the inner spirit. So he rose, stiff and constrained, and passed across to the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.
As he came out from the block of chairs, very upright and tall, with his biretta once more on his white hair, he saw an old woman watching him very closely. He hesitated an instant, wondering whether she were a penitent, and as he hesitated she made a movement towards him.
"I beg your pardon, sir," she began.
She was not a Catholic then. He lifted his biretta.
"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but were you at Brighton, at the accident two months ago?"
"I was."
"Ah! I thought so: my daughter-in-law saw you then."
Percy had a spasm of impatience: he was a little tired of being identified by his white hair and young face.
"Were you there, madam?"
She looked at him doubtfully and curiously, moving her ​old eyes up and down his figure. Then she recollected herself.
"No, sir; it was my daughter-in-law—I beg your pardon, sir, but——"
"Well?" asked Percy, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice.
"Are you the Archbishop, sir?"
The priest smiled, showing his white teeth.
"No, madam; I am just a poor priest. Dr. Cholmondeley is Archbishop. I am Father Percy Franklin."
She said nothing, but still looking at him made a little old-world movement of a bow; and Percy passed on to the dim, splendid chapel to pay his devotions.
III
There was great talk that night at dinner among the priests as to the extraordinary spread of Freemasonry. It had been going on for many years now, and Catholics perfectly recognised its dangers, for the profession of Masonry had been for some centuries rendered incompatible with religion through the Church's unswerving condemnation of it. A man must choose between that and his faith. Things had developed extraordinarily during the last century. First there had been the organised assault upon the Church in France; and what Catholics had always suspected then became a certainty in the revelations of 1918, when P. Gerôme, the Dominican and ex-Mason, had made his disclosures with regard to the Mark-Masons. It had become evident then that Catholics had been right, and that ​Masonry, in its higher grades at least, had been responsible throughout the world for the strange movement against religion. But he had died in his bed, and the public had been impressed by that fact. Then came the splendid donations in France and Italy—to hospitals, orphanages, and the like; and once more suspicion began to disappear. After all, it seemed—and continued to seem—for seventy years and more that Masonry was nothing more than a vast philanthropical society. Now once more men had their doubts.
"I hear that Felsenburgh is a Mason," observed Monsignor Macintosh, the Cathedral Administrator. "A Grand-Master or something."
"But who is Felsenburgh?" put in a young priest.
Monsignor pursed his lips and shook his head. He was one of those humble persons as proud of ignorance as others of knowledge. He boasted that he never read the papers nor any book except those that had received the imprimatur; it was a priest's business, he often remarked, to preserve the faith, not to acquire worldly knowledge. Percy had occasionally rather envied his point of view.
"He's a mystery," said another priest, Father Blackmore; "but he seems to be causing great excitement. They were selling his 'Life' to-day on the Embankment."
"I met an American senator," put in Percy, "three days ago, who told me that even there they know nothing of him, except his extraordinary eloquence. He only appeared last year, and seems to have carried everything before him by quite unusual methods. He is a great linguist, too. That is why they took him to Irkutsk."
"Well, the Masons—" went on Monsignor. "It is very ​serious. In the last month four of my penitents have left me because of it."
"Their inclusion of women was their master-stroke," growled Father Blackmore, helping himself to claret.
"It is extraordinary that they hesitated so long about that," observed Percy.
A couple of the others added their evidence. It appeared that they, too, had lost penitents lately through the spread of Masonry. It was rumoured that a Pastoral was a-preparing upstairs on the subject.
Monsignor shook his head ominously.
"More is wanted than that," he said.
Percy pointed out that the Church had said her last word several centuries ago. She had laid her excommunication on all members of secret societies, and there was really no more that she could do.
"Except bring it before her children again and again," put in Monsignor. "I shall preach on it next Sunday."
Percy dotted down a note when he reached his room, determining to say another word or two on the subject to the Cardinal-Protector. He had mentioned Freemasonry often before, but it seemed time for another remark. Then he opened his letters, first turning to one which he recognised as from the Cardinal.
It seemed a curious coincidence, as he read a series of questions that Cardinal Martin's letter contained, that one of them should be on this very subject. It ran as follows:
"What of Masonry? Felsenburgh is said to be one. Gather all the gossip you can about him. Send any ​English or American biographies of him. Are you still losing Catholics through Masonry?"
He ran his eyes down the rest of the questions. They chiefly referred to previous remarks of his own, but twice, even in them, Felsenburgh's name appeared.
He laid the paper down and considered a little.
It was very curious, he thought, how this man's name was in every one's mouth, in spite of the fact that so little was known about him. He had bought in the streets, out of curiosity, three photographs that professed to represent this strange person, and though one of them might be genuine they all three could not be. He drew them out of a pigeon-hole, and spread them before him.
One represented a fierce, bearded creature like a Cossack, with round staring eyes. No; intrinsic evidence condemned this: it was exactly how a coarse imagination would have pictured a man who seemed to be having a great influence in the East.
The second showed a fat face with little eyes and a chin-beard. That might conceivably be genuine: he turned it over and saw the name of a New York firm on the back. Then he turned to the third. This presented a long, clean-shaven face with pince-nez, undeniably clever, but scarcely strong: and Felsenburgh was obviously a strong man.
Percy inclined to think the second was the most probable; but they were all unconvincing; and he shuffled them carelessly together and replaced them.
Then he put his elbows on the table, and began to think.
He tried to remember what Mr. Varhaus, the American senator, had told him of Felsenburgh; yet it did not seem ​sufficient to account for the facts. Felsenburgh, it seemed, had employed none of those methods common in modern politics. He controlled no newspapers, vituperated nobody, championed nobody: he had no picked underlings; he used no bribes; there were no monstrous crimes alleged against him. It seemed rather as if his originality lay in his clean hands and his stainless past—that, and his magnetic character. He was the kind of figure that belonged rather to the age of chivalry: a pure, clean, compelling personality, like a radiant child. He had taken people by surprise, then, rising out of the heaving dun-coloured waters of American socialism like a vision—from those waters so fiercely restrained from breaking into storm ever since the extraordinary social revolution under Mr. Hearst's disciples, a century ago. That had been the end of plutocracy; the famous old laws of 1914 had burst some of the stinking bubbles of the time; and the enactments of 1916 and 1917 had prevented their forming again in anything like their previous force. It had been the salvation of America, undoubtedly, even if that salvation were of a dreary and uninspiring description; and now out of the flat socialistic level had arisen this romantic figure utterly unlike any that had preceded it. . . . So the senator had hinted. . . . It was too complicated for Percy just now, and he gave it up.
It was a weary world, he told himself, turning his eyes homewards. Everything seemed so hopeless and ineffective. He tried not to reflect on his fellow-priests, but for the fiftieth time he could not help seeing that they were not the men for the present situation. It was not that he preferred himself; he knew perfectly well that he, too, was fully as ​incompetent: had he not proved to be so with poor Father Francis, and scores of others who had clutched at him in their agony during the last ten years? Even the Archbishop, holy man as he was, with all his childlike faith—was that the man to lead English Catholics and confound their enemies? There seemed no giants on the earth in these days. What in the world was to be done? He buried his face in his hands. . . .
Yes; what was wanted was a new Order in the Church; the old ones were rule-bound through no fault of their own. An Order was wanted without habit or tonsure, without traditions or customs, an Order with nothing but entire and whole-hearted devotion, without pride even in their most sacred privileges, without a past history in which they might take complacent refuge. They must be franc-tireurs of Christ's Army; like the Jesuits, but without their fatal reputation, which, again, was no fault of their own. . . . But there must be a Founder—Who, in God's Name?—a Founder nudus sequens Christum nudum. . . . Yes—Franc-tireurs—priests, bishops, laymen and women—with the three vows of course, and a special clause forbidding utterly and for ever their ownership of corporate wealth.—Every gift received must be handed to the bishop of the diocese in which it was given, who must provide them himself with necessaries of life and travel. Oh!—what could they not do?. . . He was off in a rhapsody.
Presently he recovered, and called himself a fool. Was not that scheme as old as the eternal hills, and as useless for practical purposes? Why, it had been the dream of every zealous man since the First Year of Salvation that such an Order should be founded!. . . He was a fool. . . .
​Then once more he began to think of it all over again.
Surely it was this which was wanted against the Masons; and women, too.—Had not scheme after scheme broken down because men had forgotten the power of women? It was that lack that had ruined Napoleon: he had trusted Josephine, and she had failed him; so he had trusted no other woman. In the Catholic Church, too, woman had been given no active work but either menial or connected with education: and was there not room for other activities than those? Well, it was useless to think of it. It was not his affair. If Papa Angelicus who now reigned in Rome had not thought of it, why should a foolish, conceited priest in Westminster set himself up to do so?
So he beat himself on the breast once more, and took up his office-book.
He finished in half an hour, and again sat thinking; but this time it was of poor Father Francis. He wondered what he was doing now; whether he had taken off the Roman collar of Christ's familiar slaves? The poor devil! And how far was he, Percy Franklin, responsible?
When a tap came at his door presently, and Father Blackmore looked in for a talk before going to bed, Percy told him what had happened.
Father Blackmore removed his pipe and sighed deliberately.
"I knew it was coming," he said. "Well, well."
"He has been honest enough," explained Percy. "He told me eight months ago he was in trouble."
Father Blackmore drew upon his pipe thoughtfully.
"Father Franklin," he said, "things are really very serious. ​There is the same story everywhere. What in the world is happening?"
Percy paused before answering.
"I think these things go in waves," he said.
"Waves, do you think?" said the other.
"What else?"
Father Blackmore looked at him intently.
"It is more like a dead calm, it seems to me," he said. "Have you ever been in a typhoon?"
Percy shook his head.
"Well," went on the other, "the most ominous thing is the calm. The sea is like oil; you feel half-dead: you can do nothing. Then comes the storm."
Percy looked at him, interested. He had not seen this mood in the priest before.
"Before every great crash there comes this calm. It is always so in history. It was so before the Eastern War; it was so before the French Revolution. It was so before the Reformation. There is a kind of oily heaving; and everything is languid. So everything has been in America, too, for over eighty years. . . . Father Franklin, I think something is going to happen."
"Tell me," said Percy, leaning forward.
"Well, I saw Templeton a week before he died, and he put the idea in my head. . . . Look here, father. It may be this Eastern affair that is coming on us; but somehow I don't think it is. It is in religion that something is going to happen. At least, so I think. . . . Father, who in God's name is Felsenburgh?"
Percy was so startled at the sudden introduction of this name again, that he stared a moment without speaking.
​Outside, the summer night was very still. There was a faint vibration now and again from the underground track that ran twenty yards from the house where they sat; but the streets were quiet enough round the Cathedral. Once a hoot rang far away, as if some ominous bird of passage were crossing between London and the stars, and once the cry of a woman sounded thin and shrill from the direction of the river. For the rest there was no more than the solemn, subdued hum that never ceased now night or day.
"Yes; Felsenburgh," said Father Blackmore once more. "I cannot get that man out of my head. And yet, what do I know of him? What does any one know of him?"
Percy licked his lips to answer, and drew a breath to still the beating of his heart. He could not imagine why he felt excited. After all, who was old Blackmore to frighten him? But old Blackmore went on before he could speak.
"See how people are leaving the Church! The Wargraves, the Hendersons, Sir James Bartlet, Lady Magnier, and then all the priests. Now they're not all knaves—I wish they were; it would be so much easier to talk of it. But Sir James Bartlet, last month! Now, there's a man who has spent half his fortune on the Church, and he doesn't resent it even now. He says that any religion is better than none, but that, for himself, he just can't believe any longer. Now what does all that mean?. . . I tell you something is going to happen. God knows what! And I can't get Felsenburgh out of my head. . . . Father Franklin——"
"Yes?"
"Have you noticed how few great men we've got? It's ​not like fifty years ago, or even thirty. Then there were Mason, Selborne, Sherbrook, and half-a-dozen others. There was Brightman, too, as Archbishop: and now! Then the Communists, too. Braithwaite is dead fifteen years. Certainly he was big enough; but he was always speaking of the future, not of the present; and tell me what big man they have had since then! And now there's this new man, whom no one knows, who came forward in America a few months ago, and whose name is in every one's mouth. Very well, then!"
Percy knitted his forehead.
"I am not sure that I understand," he said.
Father Blackmore knocked his pipe out before answering.
"Well, this," he said, standing up. "I can't help thinking Felsenburgh is going to do something. I don't know what; it may be for us or against us. But he is a Mason, remember that. . . . Well, well; I dare say I'm an old fool. Good-night."
"One moment, father," said Percy slowly. "Do you mean—? Good Lord! What do you mean?" He stopped, looking at the other.
The old priest stared back under his bushy eyebrows; it seemed to Percy as if he, too, were afraid of something in spite of his easy talk; but he made no sign.
CHAPTER III
I
Old Mrs. Brand and Mabel were seated at a window of the new Admiralty Offices in Trafalgar Square to see Oliver deliver his speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Poor Laws Reform.
It was an inspiriting sight, this bright June morning, to see the crowds gathering round Braithwaite's statue. That politician, dead fifteen years before, was represented in his famous attitude, with arms outstretched and down dropped, his head up and one foot slightly advanced, and to-day was decked, as was becoming more and more usual on such occasions, in his Masonic insignia. It was he who had given immense impetus to that secret movement by his declaration in the House that the key of future progress and brotherhood of nations was in the hands of the Order. It was through this alone that the false unity of the Church with its fantastic spiritual fraternity could be counteracted. St. Paul had been right, he declared, in his desire to break down the partition-walls between nations, and wrong only in his exaltation of Jesus Christ. Thus he had preluded his speech on the Poor Law question, pointing to the true charity that existed among Masons apart from religious motive, and appealing to the famous benefactions on the Continent; and in the enthusiasm of the Bill's success the Order had received a great accession of members.
Old Mrs. Brand was in her best to-day, and looked out ​with considerable excitement at the huge throng gathered to hear her son speak. A platform was erected round the bronze statue at such a height that the statesman appeared to be one of the speakers, though at a slightly higher elevation, and this platform was hung with roses, surmounted by a sounding-board, and set with a chair and table.
The whole square round about was paved with heads and resonant with sound, the murmurs of thousands of voices, overpowered now and again by the crash of brass and thunder of drums as the Benefit Societies and democratic Guilds, each headed by a banner, deployed from North, South, East and West, and converged towards the wide railed space about the platform where room was reserved for them. The windows on every side were packed with faces; tall stands were erected along the front of the National Gallery and St. Martin's Church, garden-beds of colour behind the mute, white statues that faced outwards round the square, from Braithwaite in front, past the Victorians—John Davidson, John Burns, and the rest—round to Hampden and de Montfort towards the north. The old column was gone, with its lions. Nelson had not been found advantageous to the Entente Cordiale, nor the lions to the new art; and in their place stretched a wide pavement broken by slopes of steps that led up to the National Gallery. Overhead the roofs showed crowded friezes of heads against the blue summer sky. Not less than one hundred thousand persons, it was estimated in the evening papers, were collected within sight and sound of the platform by noon.
As the clocks began to tell the hour, two figures appeared ​from behind the statue and came forward, and, in an instant, the murmurs of talk rose into cheering.
Old Lord Pemberton came first, a grey-haired, upright man, whose father had been active in denouncing the House of which he was a member on the occasion of its fall over seventy years ago, and his son had succeeded him worthily. This man was now a member of the Government, and sat for Manchester (3); and it was he who was to be chairman on this auspicious occasion. Behind him came Oliver, bareheaded and spruce, and even at that distance his mother and wife could see his brisk movement, his sudden smile and nod as his name emerged from the storm of sound that surged round the platform. Lord Pemberton came forward, lifted his hand and made a signal; and in a moment the thin cheering died under the sudden roll of drums beneath that preluded the Masonic Hymn.
There was no doubt that these Londoners could sing. It was as if a giant voice hummed the sonorous melody, rising to enthusiasm till the music of massed bands followed it as a flag follows a flag-stick. The hymn was one composed ten years before, and all England was familiar with it. Old Mrs. Bland lifted the printed paper mechanically to her eyes, and saw the words that she knew so well:
"The Lord that dwells in earth and sea.". . .
She glanced down the verses, that from the Humanitarian point of view had been composed with both skill and ardour. They had a religious ring; the unintelligent Christian could sing them without a qualm; yet their sense was plain enough—the old human creed that man was all. Even Christ's ​words themselves were quoted. The kingdom of God, it was said, lay within the human heart, and the greatest of all graces was Charity.
She glanced at Mabel, and saw that the girl was singing with all her might, with her eyes fixed on her husband's dark figure a hundred yards away, and her soul pouring through them. So the mother, too, began to move her lips in chorus with that vast volume of sound.
As the hymn died away, and before the cheering could begin again, old Lord Pemberton was standing forward on the edge of the platform, and his thin, metallic voice piped a sentence or two across the tinkling splash of the fountains behind him. Then he stepped back, and Oliver came forward.
It was too far for the two to hear what was said, but Mabel slipped a paper, smiling tremulously, into the old lady's hand, and herself bent forward to listen.
Old Mrs. Brand looked at that, too, knowing that it was an analysis of her son's speech, and aware that she would not be able to hear his words.
There was an exordium first, congratulating all who were present to do honour to the great man who presided from his pedestal on the occasion of this great anniversary. Then there came a retrospect, comparing the old state of England with the present. Fifty years ago, the speaker said, poverty was still a disgrace, now it was so no longer. It was in the causes that led to poverty that the disgrace or the merit lay. Who would not honour a man worn out in the service of his country, or overcome at last by circumstances against which his efforts could not prevail? . . . ​He enumerated the reforms passed fifty years before on this very day, by which the nation once and for all declared the glory of poverty and man's sympathy with the unfortunate.
So he had told them he was to sing the praise of patient poverty and its reward, and that, he supposed, together with a few periods on the reform of the prison laws, would form the first half of his speech.
The second part was to be a panegyric of Braithwaite, treating him as the Precursor of a movement that even now had begun.
Old Mrs. Brand leaned back in her seat, and looked about her.
The window where they sat had been reserved for them; two arm-chairs filled the space, but immediately behind there were others, standing very silent now, craning forward, watching, too, with parted lips: a couple of women with an old man directly behind, and other faces visible again behind them. Their obvious absorption made the old lady a little ashamed of her distraction, and she turned resolutely once more to the square.
Ah! he was working up now to his panegyric! The tiny dark figure was back, a yard nearer the statue, and as she looked, his hand went up and he wheeled, pointing, as a murmur of applause drowned for an instant the minute, resonant voice. Then again he was forward, half crouching—for he was a born actor—and a storm of laughter rippled round the throng of heads. She heard an indrawn hiss behind her chair, and the next instant an exclamation from Mabel. . . . What was that?
There was a sharp crack, and the tiny gesticulating ​figure staggered back a step. The old man at the table was up in a moment, and simultaneously a violent commotion bubbled and heaved like water about a rock at a point in the crowd immediately outside the railed space where the bands were massed, and directly opposite the front of the platform.
Mrs. Brand, bewildered and dazed, found herself standing up, clutching the window rail, while the girl gripped her, crying out something she could not understand. A great roaring filled the square, the heads tossed this way and that, like corn under a squall of wind. Then Oliver was forward again, pointing and crying out, for she could see his gestures; and she sank back quickly, the blood racing through her old veins, and her heart hammering at the base of her throat.
"My dear, my dear, what is it?" she sobbed.
But Mabel was up, too, staring out at her husband; and a quick babble of talk and exclamations from behind made itself audible in spite of the roaring tumult of the square.
II
Oliver told them the explanation of the whole affair that evening at home, leaning back in his chair, with one arm bandaged and in a sling.
They had not been able to get near him at the time; the excitement in the square had been too fierce; but a messenger had come to his wife with the news that her husband was only slightly wounded, and was in the hands of the doctors.
​"He was a Catholic," explained the drawn-faced Oliver. "He must have come ready, for his repeater was found loaded. Well, there was no chance for a priest this time."
Mabel nodded slowly: she had read of the man's fate on the placards.
"He was killed—trampled and strangled instantly," said Oliver. "I did what I could: you saw me. But—well, I dare say it was more merciful."
"But you did what you could, my dear?" said the old lady, anxiously, from her corner.
"I called out to them, mother, but they wouldn't hear me."
Mabel leaned forward——
"Oliver, I know this sounds stupid of me; but—but I wish they had not killed him."
Oliver smiled at her. He knew this tender trait in her.
"It would have been more perfect if they had not," she said. Then she broke off and sat back.
"Why did he shoot just then?" she asked.
Oliver turned his eyes for an instant towards his mother, but she was knitting tranquilly.
Then he answered with a curious deliberateness.
"I said that Braithwaite had done more for the world by one speech than Jesus and all His saints put together." He was aware that the knitting-needles stopped for a second; then they went on again as before.
"But he must have meant to do it anyhow," continued Oliver.
"How do they know he was a Catholic?" asked the girl again.
"There was a rosary on him; and then he just had time to call on his God."
​"And nothing more is known?"
"Nothing more. He was well dressed, though."
Oliver leaned back a little wearily and closed his eyes; his arm still throbbed intolerably. But he was very happy at heart. It was true that he had been wounded by a fanatic, but he was not sorry to bear pain in such a cause, and it was obvious that the sympathy of England was with him. Mr. Phillips even now was busy in the next room, answering the telegrams that poured in every moment. Caldecott, the Prime Minister, Maxwell, Snowford and a dozen others had wired instantly their congratulations, and from every part of England streamed in message after message. It was an immense stroke for the Communists; their spokesman had been assaulted during the discharge of his duty, speaking in defence of his principles; it was an incalculable gain for them, and loss for the Individualists, that confessors were not all on one side after all. The huge electric placards over London had winked out the facts in Esperanto as Oliver stepped into the train at twilight.
"Oliver Brand wounded. . . . Catholic assailant. . . . Indignation of the country. . . . Well-deserved fate of assassin."
He was pleased, too, that he honestly had done his best to save the man. Even in that moment of sudden and acute pain he had cried out for a fair trial; but he had been too late. He had seen the starting eyes roll up in the crimson face, and the horrid grin come and go as the hands had clutched and torn at his throat. Then the face had vanished and a heavy trampling began where it had ​peared. Oh! there was some passion and loyalty left in England!
His mother got up presently and went out, still without a word; and Mabel turned to him, laying a hand on his knee.
"Are you too tired to talk, my dear?"
He opened his eyes.
"Of course not, my darling. What is it?"
"What do you think will be the effect?"
He raised himself a little, looking out as usual through the darkening windows on to that astonishing view. Everywhere now lights were glowing, a sea of mellow moons just above the houses, and above the mysterious heavy blue of a summer evening.
"The effect?" he said. "It can be nothing but good. It was time that something happened. My dear, I feel very downcast sometimes, as you know. Well, I do not think I shall be again. I have been afraid sometimes that we were losing all our spirit, and that the old Tories were partly right when they prophesied what Communism would do. But after this——"
"Well?"
"Well; we have shown that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick of time, too, just at the crisis. I don't want to exaggerate; it is only a scratch—but it was so deliberate, and—and so dramatic. The poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment. People won't forget it."
Mabel's eyes shone with pleasure.
"You poor dear!" she said. "Are you in pain?"
"Not much. Besides, Christ! what do I care? If only this infernal Eastern affair would end!"
​He knew he was feverish and irritable, and made a great effort to drive it down.
"Oh, my dear!" he went on, flushed a little. "If they would not be such heavy fools: they don't understand; they don't understand."
"Yes, Oliver?"
"They don't understand what a glorious thing it all is Humanity, Life, Truth at last, and the death of Folly! But haven't I told them a hundred times?"
She looked at him with kindling eyes. She loved to see him like this, his confident, flushed face, the enthusiasm in his blue eyes; and the knowledge of his pain pricked her feeling with passion. She bent forward and kissed him suddenly.
"My dear, I am so proud of you. Oh, Oliver!"
He said nothing; but she could see what she loved to see, that response to her own heart; and so they sat in silence while the sky darkened yet more, and the click of the writer in the next room told them that the world was alive and that they had a share in its affairs.
Oliver stirred presently.
"Did you notice anything just now, sweetheart—when I said that about Jesus Christ?"
"She stopped knitting for a moment," said the girl.
He nodded.
"You saw that too, then. . . . Mabel, do you think she is falling back?"
"Oh! she is getting old," said the girl lightly. "Of course she looks back a little."
"But you don't think—it would be too awful!"
She shook her head.
​"No, no, my dear; you're excited and tired. It's just a little sentiment. . . . Oliver, I don't think I would say that kind of thing before her."
"But she hears it everywhere now."
"No, she doesn't. Remember she hardly ever goes out. Besides, she hates it. After all, she was brought up a Catholic."
Oliver nodded, and lay back again, looking dreamily out.
"Isn't it astonishing the way in which suggestion lasts? She can't get it out of her head, even after fifty years. Well, watch her, won't you? . . . By the way . . ."
"Yes?"
"There's a little more news from the East. They say Felsenburgh's running the whole thing now. The Empire is sending him everywhere—Tobolsk, Benares, Yakutsk—everywhere; and he's been to Australia."
Mabel sat up briskly.
"Isn't that very hopeful?"
"I suppose so. There's no doubt that the Sufis are winning; but for how long is another question. Besides, the troops don't disperse."
"And Europe?"
"Europe is arming as fast as possible. I hear we are to meet the Powers next week at Paris. I must go."
"Your arm, my dear?"
"My arm must get well. It will have to go with me, anyhow."
"Tell me some more."
"There is no more. But it is just as certain as it can be that this is the crisis. If the East can be persuaded to hold its hand now, it will never be likely to raise it again. It will ​mean free trade all over the world, I suppose, and all that kind of thing. But if not——"
"Well?"
"If not, there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even imagined. The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West will be simply wiped out. These new Benninschein explosives will make certain of that."
"But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them?"
"Absolutely. Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West; then he died, luckily for him."
Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply refused to grasp it. A duel of East and West under these new conditions was an unthinkable thing. There had been no European war within living memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old conditions. Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed with a single shell. The new conditions were unimaginable. Military experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no precedents with which to compare it. It was as if archers disputed as to the results of cordite. Only one thing was certain—that the East had every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to England.
But imagination simply refused to speak. The daily papers had a short, careful leading article every day, founded upon the scraps of news that stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world; Felsenburgh's ​name appeared more frequently than ever: otherwise there seemed to be a kind of hush. Nothing suffered very much; trade went on; European stocks were not appreciably lower than usual; men still built houses, married wives, begat sons and daughters, did their business and went to the theatre, for the mere reason that there was no good in anything else. They could neither save nor precipitate the situation; it was on too large a scale. Occasionally people went mad—people who had succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of reality could be obtained; and there was a diffused atmosphere of tenseness. But that was all. Not many speeches were made on the subject; it had been found inadvisable. After all, there was nothing to do but to wait.
III
Mabel remembered her husband's advice to watch, and for a few days did her best. But there was nothing that alarmed her. The old lady was a little quiet, perhaps, but went about her minute affairs as usual. She asked the girl to read to her sometimes, and listened unblenching to whatever was offered her; she attended in the kitchen daily, organised varieties of food, and appeared interested in all that concerned her son. She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down the little path towards the junction. He would be gone three days, he said.
​It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel, running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her rather flushed and agitated in her chair.
"It is nothing, my dear," said the old lady tremulously; and she added the description of a symptom or two.
Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.
She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her presence in the house a quiet sort of delight. The effect of her upon the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body. The old lady was so tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of Life which informed the world. She found less difficulty in contemplating the end of a vigorous soul, for in that case she imagined a kind of energetic rush of force back into the origin of things; but in this peaceful old lady there was so little energy; her whole point, so to speak, lay in the delicate little fabric of personality, built out of fragile things into an entity far more significant than the sum of its component parts: the death of a flower, reflected Mabel, is sadder than the death of a lion; the breaking of a piece of china more irreparable than the ruin of a palace.
"It is syncope," said the doctor when he came in. "She may die at any time; she may live ten years."
"There is no need to telegraph for Mr. Brand?"
​He made a little deprecating movement with his hands.
"It is not certain that she will die—it is not imminent?" she asked.
"No, no; she may live ten years, I said."
He added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector, and went away.
The old lady was lying quietly in bed, when the girl went up, and put out a wrinkled hand.
"Well, my dear?" she asked.
"It is just a little weakness, mother. You must lie quiet and do nothing. Shall I read to you?"
"No, my dear; I will think a little."
It was no part of Mabel's idea to duty to tell her that she was in danger, for there was no past to set straight, no Judge to be confronted. Death was an ending, not a beginning. It was a peaceful Gospel; at least, it became peaceful as soon as the end had come.
So the girl went downstairs once more, with a quiet little ache at her heart that refused to be still.
What a strange and beautiful thing death was, she told herself—this resolution of a chord that had hung suspended for thirty, fifty or seventy years—back again into the stillness of the huge Instrument that was all in all to itself. Those same notes would be struck again, were being struck again even now all over the world, though with an infinite delicacy of difference in the touch; but that particular emotion was gone: it was foolish to think that it was sounding eternally elsewhere, for there was no elsewhere. She, too, herself would cease one day, let her see to it that the tone was pure and lovely.
​Mr. Phillips arrived the next morning as usual, just as Mabel had left the old lady's room, and asked news of her.
"She is a little better, I think," said Mabel. "She must be very quiet all day."
The secretary bowed and turned aside into Oliver's room, where a heap of letters lay to be answered.
A couple of hours later, as Mabel went upstairs once more, she met Mr. Phillips coming down. He looked a little flushed under his sallow skin.
"Mrs. Brand sent for me," he said. "She wished to know whether Mr. Oliver would be back to-night."
"He will, will he not? You have not heard?"
"Mr. Brand said he would be here for a late dinner. He will reach London at nineteen."
"And is there any other news?"
He compressed his lips.
"There are rumours," he said. "Mr. Brand wired to me an hour ago."
He seemed moved at something, and Mabel looked at him in astonishment.
"It is not Eastern news?" she asked.
His eyebrows wrinkled a little.
"You must forgive me, Mrs. Brand," he said. "I am not at liberty to say anything."
She was not offended, for she trusted her husband too well; but she went on into the sick-room with her heart beating.
The old lady, too, seemed excited. She lay in bed with a clear flush in her white cheeks, and hardly smiled at all to the girl's greeting.
"Well, you have seen Mr. Phillips, then?" said Mabel.
​Old Mrs. Brand looked at her sharply an instant, but said nothing.
"Don't excite yourself, mother. Oliver will be back to-night."
The old lady drew a long breath.
"Don't trouble about me, my dear," she said. "I shall do very well now. He will be back to dinner, will he not?"
"If the volor is not late. Now, mother, are you ready for breakfast?"
Mabel passed an afternoon of considerable agitation. It was certain that something had happened. The secretary, who breakfasted with her in the parlour looking on to the garden, had appeared strangely excited. He had told her that he would be away the rest of the day: Mr. Oliver had given him his instructions. He had refrained from all discussion of the Eastern question, and he had given her no news of the Paris Convention; he only repeated that Mr. Oliver would be back that night. Then he had gone off in a hurry half-an-hour later.
The old lady seemed asleep when the girl went up afterwards, and Mabel did not like to disturb her. Neither did she like to leave the house; so she walked by herself in the garden, thinking and hoping and fearing, till the long shadow lay across the path, and the tumbled platform of roofs was bathed in a dusty green haze from the west.
As she came in she took up the evening paper, but there was no news there except to the effect that the Convention would close that afternoon.
Twenty o'clock came, but there was no sign of Oliver. ​The Paris volor should have arrived an hour before, but Mabel, staring out into the darkening heavens had seen the stars come out like jewels one by one, but no slender winged fish pass overhead. Of course she might have missed it; there was no depending on its exact course; but she had seen it a hundred times before, and wondered unreasonably why she had not seen it now. But she would not sit down to dinner, and paced up and down in her white dress, turning again and again to the window, listening to the soft rush of the trains, the faint hoots from the track, and the musical chords from the junction a mile away. The lights were up by now, and the vast sweep of the towns looked like fairyland between the earthly light and the heavenly darkness. Why did not Oliver come, or at least let her know why he did not?
Once she went upstairs, miserably anxious herself, to reassure the old lady, and found her again very drowsy.
"He is not come," she said. "I dare say he may be kept in Paris."
The old face on the pillow nodded and murmured, and Mabel went down again. It was now an hour after dinner-time.
Oh! there were a hundred things that might have kept him. He had often been later than this: he might have missed the volor he meant to catch; the Convention might have been prolonged; he might be exhausted, and think it better to sleep in Paris after all, and have forgotten to wire. He might even have wired to Mr. Phillips, and the secretary have forgotten to pass on the message.
She went at last, hopelessly, to the telephone, and looked at it. There it was, that round silent month, that little row ​of labelled buttons. She half decided to touch them one by one, and inquire whether anything had been heard of her husband: there was his club, his office in Whitehall, Mr. Phillips's house, Parliament-house, and the rest. But she hesitated, telling herself to be patient. Oliver hated interference, and he would surely soon remember and relieve her anxiety.
Then, even as she turned away, the bell rang sharply, and a white label flashed into sight.—Whitehall.
She pressed the corresponding button, and, her hand shaking so much that she could scarcely hold the receiver to her ear, she listened.
"Who is there?"
Her heart leaped at the sound of her husband's voice, tiny and minute across the miles of wire.
"I—Mabel," she said. "Alone here."
"Oh! Mabel. Very well. I am back: all is well. Now listen. Can you hear?"
"Yes, yes."
"The best has happened. It is all over in the East. Felsenburgh has done it. Now listen. I cannot come home to-night. It will be announced in Paul's House in two hours from now. We are communicating with the Press. Come up here to me at once. You must be present. . . . Can you hear?"
"Oh, yes."
"Come then at once. It will be the greatest thing in history. Tell no one. Come before the rush begins. In half-an-hour the way will be stopped."
"Oliver."
"Yes? Quick."
​"Mother is ill. Shall I leave her?"
"How ill?"
"Oh, no immediate danger. The doctor has seen her."
There was silence for a moment.
"Yes; come then. We will go back to-night anyhow, then. Tell her we shall be late."
"Very well."
". . . Yes, you must come. Felsenburgh will be there."
CHAPTER IV
I
On the same afternoon Percy received a visitor.
There was nothing exceptional about him; and Percy, as he came downstairs in his walking-dress and looked at him in the light from the tall parlour-window, came to no conclusion at all as to his business and person, except that he was not a Catholic.
"You wished to see me," said the priest, indicating a chair.
"I fear I must not stop long."
"I shall not keep you long," said the stranger eagerly. "My business is done in five minutes."
Percy waited with his eyes cast down.
"A—a certain person has sent me to you. She was a Catholic once; she wishes to return to the Church."
Percy made a little movement with his head. It was a message he did not very often receive in these days.
"You will come, sir, will you not? You will promise me?"
The man seemed greatly agitated; his sallow face showed a little shining with sweat, and his eyes were piteous.
"Of course I will come," said Percy, smiling.
"Yes, sir; but you do not know who she is. It—it would make a great stir, sir, if it was known. It must not be known, sir; you will promise me that, too?"
"I must not make any promise of that kind," said the priest gently. "I do not know the circumstances yet."
The stranger licked his lips nervously.
​"Well, sir," he said hastily, "you will say nothing till you have seen her? You can promise me that."
"Oh! certainly," said the priest.
"Well, sir, you had better not know my name. It—it may make it easier for you and for me. And—and, if you please, sir, the lady is ill; you must come to-day, if you please, but not until the evening. Will twenty-two o'clock be convenient, sir?"
"Where is it?" asked Percy abruptly.
"It—it is near Croydon junction. I will write down the address presently. And you will not come until twenty-two o'clock, sir?"
"Why not now?"
"Because the—the others may be there. They will be away then; I know that."
This was rather suspicious, Percy thought: discreditable plots had been known before. But he could not refuse outright.
"Why does she not send for her parish-priest?" he asked.
"She she does not know who he is, sir; she saw you once in the Cathedral, sir, and asked you for your name. Do you remember, sir?—an old lady?"
Percy did dimly remember something of the kind a month or two before; but he could not be certain, and said so.
"Well, sir, you will come, will you not?"
"I must communicate with Father Dolan," said the priest. "If he gives me permission——"
"If you please, sir, Father—Father Dolan must not know her name. You will not tell him?"
"I do not know it myself yet," said the priest, smiling.
​The stranger sat back abruptly at that, and his face worked.
"Well, sir, let me tell you this first. This old lady's son is my employer, and a very prominent Communist. She lives with him and his wife. The other two will be away to-night. That is why I am asking you all this. And now, you till come, sir?"
Percy looked at him steadily for a moment or two. Certainly, if this was a conspiracy, the conspirators were feeble folk. Then he answered:
"I will come, sir; I promise. Now the name."
The stranger again licked his lips nervously, and glanced timidly from side to side. Then he seemed to gather his resolution; he leaned forward and whispered sharply.
"The old lady's name is Brand, sir—the mother of Mr. Oliver Brand."
For a moment Percy was bewildered. It was too extraordinary to be true. He knew Mr. Oliver Brand's name only too well; it was he who, by God's permission, was doing more in England at this moment against the Catholic cause than any other man alive; and it was he whom the Trafalgar Square incident had raised into such eminent popularity. And now, here was his mother——
He turned fiercely upon the man.
"I do not know what you are, sir—whether you believe in God or not; but will you swear to me on your religion and your honour that all this is true?"
The timid eyes met his, and wavered; but it was the wavering of weakness, not of treachery.
"I—I swear it, sir; by God Almighty."
"Are you a Catholic?"
​The man shook his head.
"But I believe in God," he said. "Ah least, I think so."
Percy leaned back, trying to realise exactly what it all meant. There was no triumph in his mind—that kind of emotion was not his weakness; there was fear of a kind, excitement, bewilderment, and under all a satisfaction that God's grace was so sovereign. If it could reach this woman, who could be too far removed for it to take effect? Presently he noticed the other looking at him anxiously.
"You are afraid, sir? You are not going back from your promise?"
That dispersed the cloud a little, and Percy smiled.
"Oh! no," he said. "I will be there at twenty-two o'clock. . . . Is death imminent?"
"No, sir; it is syncope. She is recovered a little this morning."
The priest passed his hand over his eyes and stood up.
"Well, I will be there," he said. "Shall you be there, sir?"
The other shook his head, standing up too.
"I must be with Mr. Brand, sir; there is to be a meeting to-night; but I must not speak of that. . . . No, sir; ask for Mrs. Brand, and say that she is expecting you. They will take you upstairs at once."
"I must not say I am a priest, I suppose?"
"No, sir; if you please."
He drew out a pocket-book, scribbled in it a moment, tore out the sheet, and handed it to the priest.
"The address, sir. Will you kindly destroy that when you have copied it? I—I do not wish to lose my place, sir, if it can be helped."
Percy stood twisting the paper in his fingers a moment.
​"Why are you not a Catholic yourself?" he asked.
The man shook his head mutely. Then he took up his hat, and went towards the door.
Percy passed a very emotional afternoon.
For the last month or two little had happened to encourage him. He had been obliged to report half-a-dozen more significant secessions, and hardly a conversion of any kind. There was no doubt at all that the tide was setting steadily against the Church. The mad act in Trafalgar Square, too, had done incalculable harm last week: men were saying more than ever, and the papers storming, that the Church's reliance on the supernatural was belied by every one of her public acts. "Scratch a Catholic and find an assassin" had been the text of a leading article in the New People, and Percy himself was dismayed at the folly of the attempt. It was true that the Archbishop had formally repudiated both the act and the motive from the Cathedral pulpit, but that too had only served as an opportunity hastily taken up by the principal papers, to recall the continual policy of the Church to avail herself of violence while she repudiated the violent. The horrible death of the man had in no way appeased popular indignation; there were not even wanting suggestions that the man had been seen coming out of Archbishop's House an hour before the attempt at assassination had taken place.
And now here, with dramatic swiftness, had come a message that the hero's own mother desired reconciliation with the Church that had attempted to murder her son.
Again and again that afternoon, as Percy sped north​wards on his visit to a priest in Worcester, and southwards once more as the lights began to shine towards evening, he wondered whether this were not a plot after all—some kind of retaliation, an attempt to trap him. Yet he had promised to say nothing, and to go.
He finished his daily letter after dinner as usual, with a curious sense of fatality; addressed and stamped it. Then he went downstairs, in his walking-dress, to Father Blackmore's room.
"Will you hear my confession, father?" he said abruptly.
II
Victoria Station, still named after the great nineteenth-century Queen, was neither more nor less busy than usual as he came into it half-an-hour later. The vast platform, sunk now nearly two hundred feet below the ground level, showed the double crowd of passengers entering and leaving town. Those on the extreme left, towards whom Percy began to descend in the open glazed lift, were by far the most numerous, and the stream at the lift-entrance made it necessary for him to move slowly.
He arrived at last, walking in the soft light on the noiseless ribbed rubber, and stood by the door of the long car that ran straight through to the Junction. It was the last of a series of a dozen or more, each of which slid off minute by minute. Then, still watching the endless movement of the lifts ascending and descending between the entrances of the upper end of the station, he stepped in and sat down.
​He felt quiet now that he had actually started. He had made his confession, just in order to make certain of his own soul, though scarcely expecting any definite danger, and sat now, his grey suit and straw hat in no way distinguishing him as a priest (for a general leave was given by the authorities to dress so for any adequate reason). Since the case was not imminent, he had not brought stocks or pyx—Father Dolan had wired to him that he might fetch them if he wished from St. Joseph's, near the Junction. He had only the violet thread in his pocket, such as was customary for sick calls.
He was sliding along peaceably enough, fixing his eyes on the empty seat opposite, and trying to preserve complete collectedness when the car abruptly stopped. He looked out, astonished, and saw by the white enamelled walks twenty feet from the window that they were already in the tunnel. The stoppage might arise from many causes, and he was not greatly excited, nor did it seem that others in the carriage took it very seriously; he could hear, after a moment's silence, the talking recommence beyond the partition.
Then there came, echoed by the walls, the sound of shouting from far away, mingled with hoots and chords; it grew louder. The talking in the carriage stopped. He heard a window thrown up, and the next instant a car tore past, going back to the station although on the down line. This must be looked into, thought Percy: something certainly was happening; so he got up and went across the empty compartment to the further window. Again came the crying of voices, again the signals, and once more a car whirled past, followed almost immediately by another. ​There was a jerk—a smooth movement. Percy staggered and fell into a seat, as the carriage in which he was seated itself began to move backwards.
There was a clamour now in the next compartment, and Percy made his way there through the door, only to find half-a-dozen men with their heads thrust from the windows, who paid absolutely no attention to his inquiries. So he stood there, aware that they knew no more than himself, waiting for an explanation from some one. It was disgraceful, he told himself, that any misadventure should so disorganise the line.
Twice the car stopped; each time it moved on again after a hoot or two, and at last drew up at the platform whence it had started, although a hundred yards further out.
Ah! there was no doubt that something had happened! The instant he opened the door a great roar met his ears, and as he sprang on to the platform and looked up at the end of the station, he began to understand.
From right to left of the huge interior, across the platforms, swelling every instant, surged an enormous swaying, roaring crowd. The flight of steps, twenty yards broad, used only in cases of emergency, resembled a gigantic black cataract nearly two hundred feet in height. Each car as it drew up discharged more and more men and women, who ran like ants towards the assembly of their fellows. The noise was indescribable, the shouting of men, the screaming of women, the clang and hoot of the huge machines, and three or four times the brazen cry of a trumpet, as an emergency door was flung open overhead, and a small swirl of crowd poured through it towards the streets be​yond. But after one look Percy looked no more at the people; for there, high up beneath the clock, on the Government signal board, flared out monstrous letters of fire, telling in Esperanto and English, the message for which England had grown sick. He read it a dozen times before he moved, staring, as at a supernatural sight which might denote the triumph of either heaven or hell.
"Eastern Convention Dispersed.
Peace, not War.
Universal Brotherhood Established.
Felsenburgh in London To-night."
III
It was not until nearly two hours later that Percy was standing at the house beyond the Junction.
He had argued, expostulated, threatened, but the officials were like men possessed. Half of them had disappeared in the rush to the City, for it had leaked out, in spite of the Government's precautions, that Paul's House, known once as St. Paul's Cathedral, was to be the scene of Felsenburgh's reception. The others seemed demented; one man on the platform had dropped dead from nervous exhaustion, but no one appeared to care; and the body lay huddled be ​neath a seat. Again and again Percy had been swept away by a rush, as he struggled from platform to platform in his search for a car that would take him to Croydon. It seemed that there was none to be had, and the useless carriages collected like drift-wood between the platforms, as others whirled up from the country bringing loads of frantic, delirious men, who vanished like smoke from the white rubber-boards. The platforms were continually crowded, and as continually emptied, and it was not until half-an-hour before midnight that the block began to move outwards again.
Well, he was here at last, dishevelled, hatless and exhausted, looking up at the dark windows.
He scarcely knew what he thought of the whole matter. War, of course, was terrible. And such a war as this would have been too terrible for the imagination to visualise; but to the priest's mind there were other things even worse. What of universal peace—peace, that is to say, established by others than Christ's method? Or was God behind even this? The questions were hopeless.
Felsenburgh—it was he then who had done this thing—this thing undoubtedly greater than any secular event hitherto known in civilisation. What manner of man was he? What was his character, his motive, his method? How would he use his success? . . . So the points flew before him like a stream of sparks, each, it might be, harmless; each, equally, capable of setting a world on fire. Meanwhile here was an old woman who desired to be reconciled with God before she died. . . .
He touched the button again, three or four times, and ​waited. Then a light sprang out overhead, and he knew that he was heard.
"I was sent for," he exclaimed to the bewildered maid. "I should have been here at twenty-two: I was prevented by the rush."
She babbled out a question at him.
"Yes, it is true, I believe," he said. "It is peace, not war. Kindly take me upstairs."
He went through the hall with a curious sense of guilt. This was Brand's house then—that vivid orator, so bitterly eloquent against God; and here was he, a priest, slinking in under cover of night. Well, well, it was not of his appointment.
At the door of an upstairs room the maid turned to him.
"A doctor, sir?" she said.
"That is my affair," said Percy briefly, and opened the door.
A little wailing cry broke from the corner, before he had time to close the door again.
"Oh! thank God! I thought He had forgotten me. You are a priest, father?"
"I am a priest. Do you not remember seeing me in the Cathedral?"
"Yes, yes, sir; I saw you praying, father. Oh! thank God, thank God!"
Percy stood looking down at her a moment, seeing her flushed old face in the nightcap, her bright sunken eyes and her tremulous hands. Yes; this was genuine enough.
"Now, my child," he said, "tell me."
"My confession, father."
​Percy drew out the purple thread, slipped it over his shoulders, and sat down by the bed. ✴✴✴✴✴ But she would not let him go for a while after that.
"Tell me, father. When will you bring me Holy Communion?"
He hesitated.
"I understand that Mr. Brand and his wife know nothing of all this?"
"No, father."
"Tell me, are you very ill?"
"I don't know, father. They will not tell me. I thought I was gone last night."
"When would you wish me to bring you Holy Communion? I will do as you say."
"Shall I send to you in a day or two? Father, ought I to tell him?"
"You are not obliged."
"I will if I ought."
"Well, think about it, and let me know. . . . You have heard what has happened?"
She nodded, but almost uninterestedly; and Percy was conscious of a tiny prick of compunction at his own heart. After all, the reconciling of a soul to God was a greater thing than the reconciling of East to West.
"It may make a difference to Mr. Brand," he said. "He will be a great man, now, you know."
She still looked at him in silence, smiling a little. Percy was astonished at the youthfulness of that old face. Then her face changed.
​"Father, I must not keep you; but tell me this—Who is this man?"
"Felsenburgh?"
"Yes."
"No one knows. We shall know more to-morrow. He is in town to-night."
She looked so strange that Percy for an instant thought it was a seizure. Her face seemed to fall away in a kind of emotion, half cunning, half fear.
"Well, my child?"
"Father, I am a little afraid when I think of that man. He cannot harm me, can he? I am safe now? I am a Catholic——?"
"My child, of course you are safe. What is the matter? How can this man injure you?"
But the look of terror was still there, and Percy came a step nearer.
"You must not give way to fancies," he said. "Just commit yourself to our Blessed Lord. This man can do you no harm."
He was speaking now as to a child; but it was of no use. Her old mouth was still sucked in, and her eyes wandered past him into the gloom of the room behind.
"My child, tell me what is the matter. What do you know of Felsenburgh? You have been dreaming."
She nodded suddenly and energetically, and Percy for the first time felt his heart give a little leap of apprehension. Was this old woman out of her mind, then? Or why was it that that name seemed to him sinister? Then he remembered that Father Blackmore had once talked like this. He made an effort, and sat down once more.
​"Now tell me plainly," he said. "You have been dreaming. What have you dreamt?"
She raised herself a little in bed, again glancing round the room; then she put out her old ringed hand for one of his, and he gave it, wondering.
"The door is shut, father? There is no one listening?"
"No, no, my child. Why are you trembling? You must not be superstitious."
"Father, I will tell you. Dreams are nonsense, are they not? Well, at least, this is what I dreamt.
"I was somewhere in a great house; I do not know where it was. It was a house I have never seen. It was one of the old houses, and it was very dark. I was a child, I thought, and I was . . . I was afraid of something. The passages were all dark, and I went crying in the dark, looking for a light, and there was none. Then I heard a voice talking, a great way off. Father——"
Her hand gripped his more tightly, and again her eyes went round the room.
With great difficulty Percy repressed a sigh. Yet he dared not leave her just now. The house was very still; only from outside now and again sounded the clang of the cars, as they sped countrywards again from the congested town, and once the sound of great shouting. He wondered what time it was.
"Had you better tell me now?" he asked, still talking with a patient simplicity. "What time will they be back?"
"Not yet," she whispered. "Mabel said not till two o'clock. What time is it now, father?"
He pulled out his watch with his disengaged hand.
"It is not yet one," he said.
​"Very well, listen, father. . . . I was in this house; and I heard that talking; and I ran along the passages, till I saw light below a door; and then I stopped. . . . Nearer, father."
Percy was a little awed in spite of himself. Her voice had suddenly dropped to a whisper, and her old eyes seemed to hold him strangely.
"I stopped, father; I dared not go in. I could hear the talking, and I could see the light; and I dared not go in. Father, it was Felsenburgh in that room."
From beneath came the sudden snap of a door; then the sound of footsteps. Percy turned his head abruptly, and at the same moment heard a swift indrawn breath from the old woman.
"Hush!" he said. "Who is that?"
Two voices were talking in the hall below now, and at the sound the old woman relaxed her hold.
"I—I thought it to be him," she murmured.
Percy stood up; he could see that she did not understand the situation.
"Yes, my child," he said quietly, "but who is it?"
"My son and his wife," she said; then her face changed once more. "Why—why, father——"
Her voice died in her throat, as a step vibrated outside. For a moment there was complete silence; then a whisper, plainly audible, in a girl's voice.
"Why, her light is burning. Come in, Oliver, but softly."
Then the handle turned.
CHAPTER V
I
There was an exclamation, then silence, as a tall, beautiful girl with flushed face and shining grey eyes came forward and stopped, followed by a man whom Percy knew at once from his pictures. A little whimpering sounded from the bed, and the priest lifted his hand instinctively to silence it.
"Why," said Mabel; and then stared at the man with the young face and the white hair.
Oliver opened his lips and closed them again. He, too, had a strange excitement in his face. Then he spoke.
"Who is this?" he said deliberately.
"Oliver," cried the girl, turning to him abruptly, "this is the priest I saw——"
"A priest!" said the other, and came forward a step. "Why, I thought——"
Percy drew a breath to steady that maddening vibration in his throat.
"Yes, I am a priest," he said.
Again the whimpering broke out from the bed; and Percy, half turning again to silence it, saw the girl mechanically loosen the clasp of the thin dust cloak over her white dress.
"You sent for him, mother?" snapped the man, with a tremble in his voice, and with a sudden jerk forward of his whole body. But the girl put out her hand.
"Quietly, my dear," she said. "Now, sir——"
​"Yes, I am a priest," said Percy again, strung up now to a desperate resistance of will, hardly knowing what he said.
"And you come to my house!" exclaimed the man. He came a step nearer, and half recoiled. "You swear you are a priest?" he said. "You have been here all this evening?"
"Since midnight."
"And you are not——" he stopped again.
Mabel stepped straight between them.
"Oliver," she said, still with that air of suppressed excitement, "we must not have a scene here. The poor dear is too ill. Will you come downstairs, sir?"
Percy took a step towards the door, and Oliver moved slightly aside. Then the priest stopped, turned and lifted his hand.
"God bless you!" he said simply, to the muttering figure in the bed. Then he went out, and waited outside the door.
He could hear a low talking within; then a compassionate murmur from the girl's voice; then Oliver was beside him, trembling all over, as white as ashes, and made a silent gesture as he went past him down the stairs.
The whole thing seemed to Percy like some incredible dream; it was all so unexpected, so untrue to life. He felt conscious of an enormous shame at the sordidness of the affair, and at the same time of a kind of hopeless recklessness. The worst had happened and the best—that was his sole comfort.
Oliver pushed a door open, touched a button, and went through into the suddenly lit room, followed by Percy. Still in silence, he pointed to a chair, Percy sat down, and ​Oliver stood before the fireplace, his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket, slightly turned away.
Percy's concentrated senses became aware of every detail of the room—the deep springy green carpet, smooth under his feet, the straight hanging thin silk curtains, the half-dozen low tables with a wealth of flowers upon them, and the books that lined the walls. The whole room was heavy with the scent of roses, although the windows were wide, and the night-breeze stirred the curtains continually. It was a woman's room, he told himself. Then he looked at the man's figure, lithe, tense, upright; the dark grey suit not unlike his own, the beautiful curve of the jaw, the clear pale complexion, the thin nose, the protruding curve of idealism over the eyes, and the dark hair. It was a poet's face, he told himself, and the whole personality was a living and vivid one. Then he turned a little and rose as the door opened, and Mabel came in, closing it behind her.
She came straight across to her husband, and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Sit down, my dear," she said. "We must talk a little. Please sit down, sir."
The three sat down, Percy on one side, and the husband and wife on a straight-backed settle opposite.
The girl began again.
"This must be arranged at once," she said, "but we must have no tragedy. Oliver, do you understand? You must not make a scene. Leave this to me."
She spoke with a curious gaiety; and Percy to his astonishment saw that she was quite sincere: there was not the hint of cynicism.
​"Oliver, my dear," she said again, "don't mouth like that! It is all perfectly right. I am going to manage this."
Percy saw a venomous look directed at him by the man; the girl saw it too, moving her strong humorous eyes from one to the other. She put her hand on his knee.
"Oliver, attend! Don't look at this gentleman so bitterly. He has done no harm."
"No harm!" whispered the other.
"No—no harm in the world. What does it matter what that poor dear upstairs thinks? Now, sir, would you mind telling us why you came here?"
Percy drew another breath. He had not expected this line.
"I came here to receive Mrs. Brand back into the Church," he said.
"And you have done so?"
"I have done so."
"Would you mind telling us your name? It makes it so much more convenient."
Percy hesitated. Then he determined to meet her on her own ground.
"Certainly. My name is Franklin."
"Father Franklin?" asked the girl, with just the faintest tinge of mocking emphasis on the first word.
"Yes. Father Percy Franklin, from Archbishop's House, Westminster," said the priest steadily.
"Well, then, Father Percy Franklin; can you tell us why you came here? I mean, who sent for you?"
"Mrs. Brand sent for me."
"Yes, but by what means?"
"That I must not say."
​"Oh, very good. . . . May we know what good comes of being 'received into the Church?'"
"By being received into the Church, the soul is reconciled to God."
"Oh! (Oliver, be quiet.) And how do you do it, Father Franklin?"
Percy stood up abruptly.
"This is no good, madam," he said. "What is the use of these questions?"
The girl looked at him in open-eyed astonishment, still with her hand on her husband's knee.
"The use, Father Franklin! Why, we want to know. There is no church law against your telling us, is there?"
Percy hesitated again. He did not understand in the least what she was after. Then he saw that he would give them an advantage if he lost his head at all: so he sat down again.
"Certainly not. I will tell you if you wish to know. I heard Mrs. Brand's confession, and gave her absolution."
"Oh! yes; and that does it, then? And what next?"
"She ought to receive Holy Communion, and anointing, if she is in danger of death."
Oliver twitched suddenly.
"Christ!" he said softly.
"Oliver!" cried the girl entreatingly. "Please leave this to me. It is much better so.—And then, I suppose, Father Franklin, you want to give those other things to my mother, too?"
"They are not absolutely necessary," said the priest, feeling, he did not know why, that he was somehow playing a losing game.
​"Oh! they are not necessary? But you would like to?"
"I shall do so if possible. But I have done what is necessary."
It required all his will to keep quiet. He was as a man who had armed himself in steel, only to find that his enemy was in the form of a subtle vapour. He simply had not an idea what to do next. He would have given anything for the man to have risen and flown at his throat, for this girl was too much for them both.
"Yes," she said softly. "Well, it is hardly to be expected that my husband should give you leave to come here again. But I am very glad that you have done what you think necessary. No doubt it will be a satisfaction to you, Father Franklin, and to the poor old thing upstairs, too. While we—we—" she pressed her husband's knee—"we do not mind at all. Oh!—but there is one thing more."
"If you please," said Percy, wondering what on earth was coming.
"You Christians—forgive me if I say anything rude—but, you know, you Christians have a reputation for counting heads, and making the most of converts. We shall be so much obliged, Father Franklin, if you will give us your word not to advertise this—this incident. It would distress my husband, and give him a great deal of trouble."
"Mrs. Brand—" began the priest.
"One moment. . . . You see, we have not treated you badly. There has been no violence. We will promise not to make scenes with my mother. Will you promise us that?"
Percy had had time to consider, and he answered instantly.
"Certainly, I will promise that."
Mabel sighed contentedly.
​"Well, that is all right. We are so much obliged. . . . And I think we may say this, that perhaps after consideration my husband may see his way to letting you come here again to do Communion and—and the other thing——"
Again that spasm shook the man beside her.
"Well, we will see about that. At any rate, we know your address, and can let you know. . . . By the way, Father Franklin, are you going back to Westminster to-night?"
He bowed.
"Ah! I hope you will get through. You will find London very much excited. Perhaps you heard——"
"Felsenburgh?" said Percy.
"Yes. Julian Felsenburgh," said the girl softly, again with that strange excitement suddenly alight in her eyes. "Julian Felsenburgh," she repeated. "He is there, you know. He will stay in England for the present."
Again Percy was conscious of that slight touch of fear at the mention of that name.
"I understand there is to be peace," he said.
The girl rose and her husband with her.
"Yes," she said, almost compassionately, "there is to be peace. Peace at last." (She moved half a step towards him, and her face glowed like a rose of fire. Her hand rose a little.) "Go back to London, Father Franklin, and use your eyes. You will see him, I dare say, and you will see more besides." (Her voice began to vibrate.) "And you will understand, perhaps, why we have treated you like this—why we are no longer afraid of you—why we are willing that my mother should do its she pleases. Oh! you will understand, Father Franklin—if not to-night, to-morrow; or if not to-morrow, at least in a very short time."
​"Mabel!" cried her husband.
The girl wheeled, and threw her arms round him, and kissed him on the mouth.
"Oh! I am not ashamed, Oliver, my dear. Let him go and see for himself. Good-night, Father Franklin."
As he went towards the door, hearing the ping of the bell that some one touched in the room behind him, he turned once more, dazed and bewildered; and there were the two, husband and wife, standing in the soft, sunny light, as if transfigured. The girl had her arm round the man's shoulder, and stood upright and radiant as a pillar of fire; and even on the man's face there was no anger now—nothing but an almost supernatural pride and confidence. They were both smiling.
Then Percy passed out into the soft, summer night.
II
Percy understood nothing except that he was afraid, as he sat in the crowded car that whirled him up to London. He scarcely even heard the talk round him, although it was loud and continuous; and what he heard meant little to him. He understood only that there had been strange scenes, that London was said to have gone suddenly mad, that Felsenburgh had spoken that night in Paul's House.
He was afraid at the way in which he had been treated, and he asked himself dully again and again what it was that had inspired that treatment; it seemed that he had been in the presence of the supernatural; he was conscious of shivering a little, and of the symptoms of an intolerable ​sleepiness. It was scarcely strange to him that he should be sitting in a crowded car at two o'clock of a summer dawn.
Thrice the car stopped, and he stared out at the signs of confusion that were everywhere; at the figures that ran in the twilight between the tracks, at a couple of wrecked carriages, a tumble of tarpaulins; he listened mechanically to the hoots and cries that sounded everywhere.
As he stepped out at last on to the platform, he found it very much as he had left it two hours before. There was the same desperate rush as the car discharged its load, the same dead body beneath the seat; and above all, as he ran helplessly behind the crowd, scarcely knowing whither he ran or why, above him burned the same stupendous message beneath the clock. Then he found himself in the lift, and a minute later he was out on the steps behind the station.
​It was impossible to move.
He found himself standing in a position of extraordinary advantage, at the very top of the broad flight of steps that led down into the old station yard, now a wide space that united, on the left the broad road to the palace, and on the right Victoria Street, that showed like all else one vivid perspective of lights and heads. Against the sky on his right rose up the illuminated head of the Cathedral Campanile. It appeared to him as if he had known that in some previous existence.
He edged himself mechanically a foot or two to his left, till he clasped a pillar; then he waited, trying not to analyse his emotions, but to absorb them.
Gradually he became aware that this crowd was as no other that he had ever seen. To his psychical sense it seemed to him that it possessed a unity unlike any other. There was magnetism in the air. There was a sensation as if a creative act were in process, whereby thousands of individual cells were being welded more and more perfectly every instant into one huge sentient being with one will, one emotion, and one head. The crying of voices seemed significant only as the stirrings of this creative power which so expressed itself. Here rested this giant humanity, stretching to his sight in living limbs so far as he could see on every side, waiting, waiting for some consummation—stretching, too, as his tired brain began to guess, down every thoroughfare of the vast city.
​He had a sense that he had seen all this before; and, like a child, he began to ask himself where it could have happened, until he remembered that it was so that he had once dreamt of the Judgment Day—of humanity gathered to meet Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ! Ah! how tiny that Figure seemed to him now—how far away—real indeed, but insignificant to himself—how hopelessly apart from this tremendous life! He glanced up at the Campanile. Yes; there was a piece of the True Cross there, was there not?—a little piece of the wood on which a Poor Man had died twenty centuries ago. . . . Well, well. It was a long way off. . . .
He did not quite understand what was happening to him. "Sweet Jesus, be to me not a Judge but a Saviour," he whispered beneath his breath, gripping the granite of the pillar; and a moment later knew how futile was that prayer. It was gone like a breath in this vast, vivid atmosphere of man. He had said mass, had he not? this morning—in white vestments.—Yes; he had believed it all then—desperately, but truly; and now. . . .
To look into the future was as useless as to look into the past. There was no future, and no past: it was all one eternal instant, present and final. . . .
Then he let go of effort, and again began to see with his bodily eyes.
The dawn was coming up the sky now, a steady soft brightening that appeared in spite of its sovereignty to be as nothing compared with the brilliant light of the streets. "We need no sun," he whispered, smiling piteously; "no sun or light of a candle. We ​have our light on earth—the light that lighteneth every man. . . ."
The Campanile seemed further away than ever now, in that ghostly glimmer of dawn—more and more helpless every moment, compared with the beautiful vivid shining of the streets.
Then he listened to the sounds, and it seemed to him as if somewhere, far down eastwards, there was a silence beginning. He jerked his head impatiently, as a man behind him began to talk rapidly and confusedly. Why would he not be silent, and let silence be heard? . . . The man stopped presently, and out of the distance there swelled up a roar, as soft as the roll of a summer tide; it passed up towards him from the right; it was about him, dinning in his ears. There was no longer any individual voice: it was the breathing of the giant that had been born; he was crying out too; he did not know what he said, but he could not be silent. His veins and nerves seemed alight with wine; and as he stared down the long street, hearing the huge cry ebb from him and move toward the palace, he knew why he had cried, and why he was now silent.
A slender, fish-shaped thing, as white as milk, as ghostly as a shadow, and as beautiful as the dawn, slid into sight half-a-mile away, turned and came towards him, floating, as it seemed, on the very wave of silence that it created, up, up the long curving street on outstretched wings, not twenty feet above the heads of the crowd. There was one great sigh, and then silence once more.
When Percy could think consciously again—for his will was only capable of efforts as a clock of ticks—the strange ​white thing was nearer. He told himself that he had seen a hundred such before; and at the same instant that this was different from all others.
Then it was nearer still, floating slowly, slowly, like a gull over the sea; he could make out its smooth nose, its low parapet beyond, the steersman's head motionless; he could even hear now the soft winnowing of the screw—and then he saw that for which he had waited.
High on the central deck there stood a chair, draped, too, in white, with some insignia visible above its back; and in the chair sat the figure of a man, motionless and lonely. He made no sign as he came; his dark dress showed vividedly against the whiteness; his head was raised, and he turned it gently now and again from side to side.
It came nearer still, in the profound stillness; the head turned, and for an instant the face was plainly visible in the soft, radiant light.
It was a pale face, strongly marked, as of a young man, with arched, black eyebrows, thin lips, and white hair.
Then the face turned once more, the steersman shifted his head, and the beautiful shape, wheeling a little, passed the corner, and moved up towards the palace.