"You understand, your Eminence, do you not? It is impossible that the Cardinal should go alone. I am his secretary. I can arrange everything with . . . with the Rector of the English College here, if there is no one else. That is right, is it not, your Eminence?"
The Italian hesitated.
"Prince Otteone went alone----" he began.
"Exactly. And there were no witnesses. That must not happen again."
There was an obvious answer, but no one made it. Cardinal Bellairs stood up, lifting himself with his stick.
"It is very good of you," he said quietly. "I understand why you make the offer. But it is impossible. Monsignor, will you talk with His Eminence a little? There are one or two things he wishes to tell you. I have to see the Holy Father, but I will be with you again soon."
The priest stood up too.
"I must come with you to His Holiness," he said. "I will abide by his decision."
The other shook his head, again smiling almost indulgently.
Monsignor turned swiftly to the Italian.
"Your Eminence," he said, "will you get this favour for me? I must see the Holy Father after Cardinal Bellairs has seen him, since I may not go with him."
The English Cardinal turned with a little abrupt movement and stood looking at him. There was a silence.
"Well--come," he said.
(II)
The contrast between these two great Princes of the Church and their Lord and Master struck Monsignor very strongly, in spite of his excitement, as he followed his chief into the Pope"s room, and saw an almost startlingly commonplace man, of middle size, rise up from the table at which he was writing.
He was a Frenchman, Monsignor knew, and not an exceptional Frenchman. There was nothing sensational or even impressive about his appearance, except his white dress and insignia; and even these, upon him, seemed somehow rather tame and ordinary. His voice, when he spoke presently, was of an ordinary kind of pitch and his speaking rather rapid; his eyes were a commonplace grey, his nose a little fleshy, and his mouth completely undistinguished. He was, in short, completely unlike the Pope of fiction and imagination; there was nothing of the Pontiff about him in his manner. He might have been a clean-shaven business man of average ability, who had chosen to dress himself up in a white ca.s.sock and to sit in an enormous room furnished in crimson damask and gold, with chandeliers, at a rather inconvenient writing-desk. Even at this dramatic moment Monsignor found himself wondering how in the world this man had risen to the highest office on earth. (He had been the son of a postmaster in Tours, the priest remembered.)
The Pope murmured an unintelligible greeting as the two, after kissing his ring, sat down beside the writing-table.
"So you have come to take your leave, your Eminence?" he began.
"We should all be very grateful for your willingness to go. G.o.d will reward you."
"Plainly it must be a Cardinal this time, Holy Father," said the Englishman, smiling. "We have still four days. And one of my nationality has affinity with the Germans, and yet is not one of them, as I remarked to your Holiness last night. Besides, I am getting an old man."
There was nothing whatever of the gallant _poseur_ in his manner, whatever were the words. Monsignor perceived that somehow or another these persons stood in an att.i.tude towards death that was beyond his comprehension altogether. They spoke of it lightly and genially.
"Eh well," said the Pope, "it is decided so. You go to-night?"
"Yes, Holy Father, it is absolutely necessary for me to arrange my affairs first. I have chartered a private volor. One of my own servants has volunteered to drive it. But there is one more matter before I receive your Holiness" instructions. This priest here, my secretary, Monsignor Masterman, wishes to come with me. I ask your Holiness to forbid that. I wish him to be Vicar-Capitular of my diocese, if possible, in the event of my death."
The Pope glanced across at the priest.
"Why do you wish to go, Monsignor? Do you understand to what you are going?"
"Holy Father, I understand everything. I wish to go because it is not right that the Cardinal should go alone. Let there be a witness this time. The Rector of the English College here can receive all necessary instructions from His Eminence and myself."
"And you, Eminence?"
"I do not wish him to go because there is no need why two should go, Holiness. One can carry the message as well as two."
There was silence for a moment. The Pope began to play with a pen that lay before him. Then Monsignor burst out again.
"Holy Father, I beg of you to let me go. I am afraid of death; . . . that is one reason why I should go. I am crippled mentally; my memory left me a few months ago; it may leave me again, and this time helpless and useless. And it is possible that I may be of some service. Two are better than one."
For a moment the Pope said nothing. He had glanced up curiously as the priest had said that he was "afraid of death." Then he had looked down again, his lips twitching slightly.
"Eh well," he said. "You shall go if you wish it."
(III)
There was only a very small group of people collected to see the second envoy leave for Berlin. The hour and place of starting had been kept secret, on purpose to avoid a crowd; and beyond three or four from the English College, with half a dozen private friends of the Cardinal, a few servants, and perhaps a dozen pa.s.sers-by who had collected below in curiosity at seeing a racing-volor attached to one of the disused flying stages on the hill behind the Vatican--no one else, in the crowds that swarmed now in the streets and squares of Rome, was even certain that an envoy was going, still less of his ident.i.ty.
Monsignor found himself, ten minutes before the start, standing alone on the alighting-stage, while the Cardinal still talked below.
As he stood there, now looking out over the city, where beneath the still luminous sky the lights were already beginning to kindle, and where in one or two of the larger squares he could make out the great crowds moving to and fro--now staring at the long and polished sides of the racing boat that swayed light as a flower with the buoyancy of the inrushing gas--as he saw all these things with his outward eyes, he was trying to understand something of the new impulses and thoughts that surged through him. He could have given little or no account of the reasons why he was here; of his hopes or fears or expectations. He was as one who watches on a sheet shadow-figures whirl past confusedly, catching a glimpse here of a face or body, now of a fragmentary movement, that appeared to have some meaning--yet grasping nothing of the intention or plan of the whole. Or, even better, he was as one caught in a mill-race, tossed along and battered, yet feeling nothing acutely, curious indeed as to what the end would be, and why it had had a beginning, yet fundamentally unconcerned. The thing was so: there was no more to be said. He knew that it was necessary that he should be here, about to start for almost certain death, as that his soul should be inhabiting his body.
But even all these recent happenings had not as yet illuminated him in the slightest as to the real character of the world that he found so bewildering. He felt, vaguely, that he ought to have by now all the pieces of the puzzle, but he was still as far as ever from being able to fit them into a coherent whole. He just perceived this--and no more--that the extraordinary tranquillity of these Catholics in the presence of death was a real contribution to the problem--as much as the dull earthliness of the Socialist colony in America. It was not merely Dom Adrian in particular who had been willing to die without perturbation or protest; his judges and accusers seemed just as ready when their turn came. And he--he who had cried out at Christian brutality, who had judged the world"s system by his own and found it wanting--he feared death; although, so far his fear had not deterred him from facing it.
He took his place in the narrow cabin in the same mood, following the Cardinal in after the last good-byes had been said. It was a tiny place, fitted with a single padded seat on either side covered with linen and provided with pillows; a narrow table ran up the centre; and strong narrow windows looked directly from the sides of the boat. A stern platform, railed in and provided with sliding gla.s.s shutters, gave room to take a few steps of exercise; but the front of the boat was entirely occupied with the driver"s arrangements. It was a comparatively new type of boat, he learned from some one with whom he had talked just now, used solely for racing purposes; and its speed was such that they would find themselves in Berlin before morning.
The stern door was swung to by one who leaned from the stage.
Still through the gla.s.s the Cardinal smiled out at his friends and waved his hand. Then a bell struck, a vibration ran through the boat, the stage outside lined with faces suddenly swayed and then fell into s.p.a.ce.
The Cardinal laid his hand on the priest"s knee.
"Now let us have a talk," he said.
(IV)
The air that breathed down from the Alps was beginning to cloud the windows of the cabin before they had finished talking.
The man who had lost his memory, under the tremendous stress of an emotion of which he was hardly directly conscious at all--the emotion generated by the knowledge that every whistling mile that fled past brought him nearer an almost certain death--had experienced a kind of sudden collapse of his defences such as he had never contemplated.
He had told everything straight out to this quiet, fatherly man--his terrors, his shrinking from the unfamiliar atmosphere of thought to which he had awakened, it seemed, a few months before, his sense that Christianity had lost its spirit, and, above all, the strange absence of any definite religious emotion in himself.
He found this difficult to put into words; he had hardly realized it even to himself.
The Cardinal put one question.
"And yet you are facing death on the understanding that it is all true?"