“Nothing of the kind,” George retorted with all his claws out. “On the contrary, it is I—the creature of you, my Lord Cardinal, and your Catholics—who make Holy Poverty look ridiculous!”
“A clever paradox!” The cardinal let a tinge of his normal sneer affect his voice.
“Not even a paradox. A poor thing: but mine own,” George flung in, glaring through his great-great-grandfather’s silver spectacles which he used indoors.
“Well, well: the money-question need not trouble you,” said the cardinal, turning again to the window. Indifference was his pose.
“But it does trouble me. It vitally troubles me. And your amazing summons troubles me as well—now. Why do you come to me after all these years?”
“Precisely, Mr. Rose, after all these years, as you say. It has been suggested to me, and I am bound to say that I agree with the suggestion, that we ought to take your singular persistency during all these years—how many years?”
“Say twenty.”
“That we must take your singular persistency during twenty years as a proof of the genuineness of your Vocation.”
George turned his face to the little yellow cat, who had climbed to and was nestling on his shoulder.
“And therefore,” the cardinal continued, “I am here today to summon you to accept Holy Order with no delay beyond the canonical intervals.”
“I will respond to that summons within two years.”
“Within two years? Life is uncertain, Mr. Rose. We who are here today may be in our graves by then. I myself am an old man.”
“I know. Your Eminency is an old man. I, by the grace of God, the virtue of my ancestors, and my own attention to my physique, am still a young man; and younger by far than my years. I have not been preserved in the vigour and freshness of youth by miracle after miracle during twenty years for nothing. And, when I shall have published three more books, I will respond to your summons. Not till then.”
“I told you that the money-question need not hinder you.”
“Yes, Eminency; and my late diocesan said the same thing several years ago.”
“You are suspicious, Mr. Rose.”
“I have reason to be suspicacious, Eminency.”
The cardinal threw up his hands. The gesture wedded irritation to despair. “You doubt me?” he all but gasped.
“I trusted Your Eminency in 1894; and—”
The bishop intervened: for cardinalitial human nature burst out in vermilion flames.
“George,” he said, “I am witness of Zmnts’s words.”
“What’s the good of that? Suppose that I take His Eminency’s word! Suppose that in a couple of months he alters his mind, determines to mistake the large for the great and to perpetrate another pea-soup-and-streaky-bacon-coloured caricature of an electric-light-station! What then would be my remedy? Where would be my contract again? And could I hale a prince of the church before a secular tribunal? Would I? Could I subpoena Your Lordship to testify against your Metropolitan and Provincial? Would I? Would you? My Lord Cardinal, I must speak, and you must hear me, as man to man. You are offering me Holy Orders on good grounds, on right and legitimate grounds, on grounds which I knew would be conceded sooner or later. I thank God for conceding them now. … You also are offering something in the shape of money.” In his agitation, he suddenly rose, to Flavio’s supreme discomfiture; and began to roll a cigarette from dottels in a tray on the mantelpiece.
“If I correctly interpret you, you are offering to me, who will be no man’s pensioner, who will accept no man’s gifts, a gift, a pension—”
“No,” the cardinal very mildly interjected: “but restitution.”
“Oh!” George ejaculated, suddenly sitting down, and staring like the martyr who, while yet the pagan pincers were at work upon his tenderest internals, beheld the angel-bearers of his amaranthine coronal.
“Amends and restitution,” the cardinal repeated.
“What am I to say?” George addressed his cat and the bishop.
“You are simply to say in what form you will accept this act of justice from us,” the cardinal responded, taking the question to himself.
“Oh, I must have time to think. You must afford me time to think.”
“No, George,” said the bishop: “take no time at all. Speak your mind now. Do make an effort to believe that we are sincerely in earnest; and that in this matter we are in your hands. I may say that, Yrmnts?” he inquired.
“Certainly: we place ourselves in Mr. Rose’s hands—unreservedly—ha!” the cardinal affirmed, and gasped with the exertion.
George concentrated his faculties; and recited, rather than spoke, demurely and deliberately and dynamically. “I must have a written expression of regret for the wrongs which have been done to me both by Your Eminency and by others who have followed your advice, command, or example.”
“It is here,” the cardinal said, taking a folded paper from the fascicule of his breviary. “We knew that you would want that. I may point out that I have written in my own name, and also as the mouthpiece of the Catholic body.”
George took the paper and carefully read it two or three times, with some flickering of his thin fastidious lips. It certainly was very handsome. Then he said, “I thank Your Eminency and my brother-Catholics,” and put the document in the fire, where in a moment it was burned to ash.
“Man alive!” cried the bishop.
“I do not care to preserve a record of my superiors’ humiliation,” said George, again in his didactic recitative.
“I see that Mr. Rose knows how to behave nobly, as you said, Frank,” the cardinal commented.
“Only now and then, Eminency. One cannot be always posing. But I long ago had arranged to do that, if you ever should give me the opportunity. And now,” he paused—and continued, “you concede my facts?”
“We may not deny them, Mr. Rose.”
“Then, now that I in my turn have placed myself in your hands” (again he was reciting), “I must have a sum of money”—(that paradoxical “must” was quite in his best manner)—“I must have a sum of
