Fifteen comparatively speechless Eminencies spent a few weeks there in quiet leisure, reading in the library, admiring the pictures and the sculptures, sometimes strolling in the gardens. One of them seriously began to study botany; and the Cardinal-Dean, with a view to a future Bull, composed a very scathing indictment of that hypocritical anomaly called Christian Socialism. And all the time the pontifical army guarded the inside of every entrance, fraternizing through the gratings with the national army outside. But special correspondents of the London newspapers in Rome munched vacuity and excreted fibs, after their kind.
By twos and threes, plain (but very dignified) priests arrived: were admitted; and changed black for violet. One did not change. He was only Cardinal Courtleigh’s new chaplain. The door of the Conclave was locked on both sides and bricked-up again.
Ensued another session of the Compromissaries, when their authentic act was put into prescribed form by apostolic prothonotaries. Ensued a final capitular assembly, in which the Act of the Compromise was published. Ensued a tempest of tongues and manners, dissolving (as storms do) in muttered thunders, less and less convulsive upheavals, a parcel of broken boughs and chimney-pots, stillness, peace, relief, and sun-bright April smiles.
III
When their lords had entered the Xystine Chapel for this last exercise, the conclavists went away about their own affairs; and the door was shut. The Reverend George Arthur Rose departed with the Bishop of Caerleon who was acting-chaplain to Cardinal Mundo. They walked in the royal gallery between the Xystine and the Pauline Chapels. George was in a mood of silence. His mind (as usual) was receiving impressions: the historic scene being enacted under his notice: the magnificent masks veiling the humanity of the actors: the mysterious gloom of the stage, its smallness, its air of cavernous confinement: the sour oppressive septic odour of architectural and waxen and human antiquity. He had been told that he would have to say mass before noon; and his head ached from fasting in that indescribably stifling effluvia. He remembered that, in former days necessity frequently had forced him to abstain from all food for a hundred hours at a time. Often, during four days in the week, he had eaten nothing: but that was in the open air, on the shore of a northern sea, or among the heather on moors and mountains, where the wind and the spray gave life. Here, the fast of less than twenty hours made him sick and sulky. However, it had to be tolerated. Semphill once had told him that a course in an ecclesiastical college, and the first few years of clerical life, were as disgusting as ten years’ penal servitude. He took it at that with his eyes open. It was part of the business. He determined to go through with it. Still, he was in a better position now than he ever had been before. He no longer was alone. Dr. Talacryn had seemed anxious for his company since that day in London; and George was inclined to value kindness. The Bishop of Caerleon appeared to be precisely what the new-fledged priest knew himself to need—a sympathetic expert subintelligent walking-stick, honest and sturdy as oak. Oh, for the certainty of fidelity! Presently George took out his cherished edition of Theokritos by Estienne. In spare moments, he was introducing his companion to the melody of Greek; and together they read and analyzed the twelfth idyll.
An hour later, the bishop suggested that they should go into the Pauline Chapel and say some prayers. George followed him. Prayer is a mind-cleanser—the best: anyhow it is an effort always due. They looked for a clean four-feet-of-floor: kneeled side by side; and got into communication with the Unseen. George’s method was intellectual rather than formal. To him, with his keen and carefully cultivated sense of the ridiculous, the absurdity of a human individual composing complacent criticisms of Divine decrees, hashing up scriptural and liturgical tags with a proper and essentially sensuous pleasure in patchwork, seemed like gratuitous impertinence. “Dear Jesus, be not to me a Judge, but a Saviour,” was all the form of words which he used. It included everything, as far as he could see. He repeated it over and over again and again like a wonderful incantation; and anon it had its psychic effect. He became in direct communication with the Invisible Omniscient, to Whom all hearts are open, from Whom no secrets are hid. It was just his own method, compiled from bittersweet experience. In time, he began to finger his moonstone rosary, concentrating his meditation on the Mystery of the Annunciation: his mind strenuously went to work on that: his lips swiftly enunciated the prayers. After five decades he said Salve Regina: and examined his conscience. Was there any difference in him? He felt more clear: he felt that he had effected some kind of a difference. That was relief. But was it worth anything? Wasn’t it stained? Was he really strengthened by the exercise? For example, was he now filled and inflamed with pure Love? No. Was he any nearer to pure Love, fit to be thought of, even harshly, by pure Love? No. Well: he had done his best: it would come some day. God be merciful to us all
