The pontifical voice was hard and cruel: the face was harder and more cruel and also more terrible. The very Presence was like a candent flame. Good honest innocent Leighton looked at Him as at something inhuman: but he persevered.
“Holiness, I want to go on. Do You know who wrote the other letters?”
“Oh yes. D. J. was another ‘excellent priest.’ He was in philosophy when We were in theology at Maryvale. Why you know him too, Leighton—he took his B.A. with Ambrose.”
“What, ‘Gionde’? Yes, of course I knew him.”
“That’s the man. We have not heard from him for years: but he evidently thought it right to defend Us. Poor chap! A snub rewards him. The Catholic Hour ‘differs from him.’ … A tipsy publican wrote the second; and the third was written by a Jesuit jackal, in return for the custom of, and most likely at the dictation of, the very detestable scoundrel to whom We wrote the last.”
“What became of him? The bad priest I mean?”
“He ruined himself, as We predicted. He persisted in his career of crime till his bishop found him out. Then he was broken, and disappeared—Maison de santé or something of that sort for a time. He’s in one of the colonies now; and he might have been—Lord Cardinal, We have said too much. It is not Our Will and pleasure to move in this matter.”
“But the advantage I derive from hearing Your Holiness—if it is not impertinent—Holiness, I venture to assure you of my eternal fidelity—” Leighton stammered with emotion.
Hadrian showed him no face: turned to the window which displayed the panorama of Intangible Rome; and presently was alone.
“God! God!” He exclaimed, shaking the paper with terrific violence. “Do you see this brutal cynical unrighteousness—prejudged—condemned—the mere suggestion of defence derided and fleered-at—in England, fair-minded England—England the land of the free—”
No: it was not England, but just a handful of the vicious vermin which infest her. England—the word summoned Him to His apostolature again. What was the mind of England now? That question occupied Him. He wished that England would declare Her mind to Him through ambassadors, the mind of the statesmen of England. He had no official acquaintance with any one of them. He could not ask for England’s confidence: for, being English, He knew that asking slams the door. Humanly speaking, He had nothing to guide Him in the cosmic crisis of the present, the crisis in which He was certain to be consulted—as a last resort—but certain to be consulted. Of that, He was convinced. A short calculation displayed Jupiter passing through Aries, which signified immense benefit to England. Oh, very good. Then what should be His course of action? He got up and went round the room, looking at the maps and noting them, until it seemed that His mental horizon expanded and enlarged, and He had the whole of the orb of the earth within His vision. What should He say, or do, for England, when she was too shy, too proud, to give Him a sign as to what She wanted Him to say, or do? England, England!—“Land of hope and glory—how shall We extol thee Who are born of thee?—wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set: God, Who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!”
He would say and do that which was given to Him to say or do. As an Englishman, He had His intuitions. And He required no confidences. England, the shy, the proud, should be served by Her shy proud son, the Servant of the servants of God. The divine afflatus of patriotism inspired Him, brightening His eyes, erecting His head. He sat down again: took His writing-board on His knees; and wrote. Anon, He rang the bell and gave some orders. Also, He sent some written slips of ciphers to the operators in the Vatican marconigraph office.
On the twenty-second of January, the Supreme Pontiff descended to the basilica of St. Peter-by-the-Vatican; and sang mass for the repose of the soul of Queen Victoria, the Great, the Good. The same day, the English newspapers announced that His Holiness had sent a cardinal-ablegate to place the Golden Rose, the pontifical tribute to virtuose queens, on Her Majesty’s tomb in the mausoleum at Frogmore.
XIX
The Italian Socialists having been won for Italy, and the German Socialists by the German Emperor, the British Socialists began to wonder where they themselves came in. The predilection for forming societies which is to be met-with among all the degenerate and hysterical, may assume different forms. Criminals unite in bands, as Lombroso expressly establishes. Hence the British Socialists (in their quandary) held fatuous meetings hoping to generate a policy in an atmosphere of hot envious man. They really did want to know their exact position: for, in some indefinable way, they were beginning to feel that they were by no means as necessary to the universe as they had imagined themselves to be. It seemed as though this planet (for one) were moving quite easily without them, and (what was more annoying) on a path which was quite strange to them, a comfortable path and a desirable. They felt that they were being left out in the cold; and, as their nature was, they looked about for some safe person on whom to void their spleen. They began with the Roman Pontiff. That an archaic potentate of His calibre, should prove to be fresh and actual and vigorous, struck them as something of a nuisance. They had deemed Him hardly
