Beneath, like huge voices speaking a single word all at once, roared the old guns from the Tower and Greenwich and the palaces.
The Cardinal shook his head.
"I . . . I forget," he said; "I was thinking. . . . What am I to do?"
The old priest looked at him again earnestly, without speaking.
Then he leaned forward closer still.
"Will your Eminence authorize me to give the signals?"
"Yes, yes, Father . . . anything. What am I to do? Have I to say anything?"
His eyes had a look of dawning terror in them as he glanced from side to side. The priest once again laid his hand on the lace-covered wrist and held it there steadily.
"Nothing at all, your Eminence. You have simply to sit still. I will arrange everything."
Still standing there, he turned slightly and made a sharp gesture behind the throne with his left hand. A bell sounded instantly.
There was a moment"s silence. Then once again a bell; and a chorus answered it.
Very slowly the Cardinal lifted his head, and saw before him the Royal barge sway ever so slightly, conscious himself that through his own vessel a vibration was beginning to run as the huge engines beneath moved into action. Again roared the guns far down the river, and, as the bellow ceased, from a thousand steeples broke out the clamour of brazen tongues. . . .
He sat still; he knew at least that this he must do. . . . Surely this obscurity of brain would pa.s.s again in a moment. He was going to meet the Holy Father, was he not? . . . down there, down that road of light and air, along which now his great barge floated side by side with the King"s. That was it. He remembered again now as his memory flickered in glimpses. This was the great Progress round the world of the new Arbiter of the World, the Vicar of the Prince of Peace, come into his Kingdom at last.
He kept his eyes steadily before him, scarcely seeing the flash of the river as it swept beneath him and away, or on all sides the dipping flags, the monstrous gilded prows, the bravery of colour, down this broad road on which he went, scarcely conscious that, as he pa.s.sed, the great barges wheeled behind him to follow to the meeting; scarcely hearing the tremendous music that, sweeping up from the crowded streets below, wafted up to him the adoration of a free people who had learned at last that the Law of Liberty was the Law of Love. . . .
Ah! there at last they came. . . .
Far down, rising every instant higher above the summer haze, outlined against a heaven of intensest blue, approached a cloud that sparkled as it came, that broke into a thousand points of colour--a long, flat cloud, seen at first as a steamer stretched across the sky, curving down behind, as it seemed, into the haze from which it came. On and up it came, growing every instant, widening and deepening, ever more and more clear in colour and form and depth.
It could be seen now of what elements it was made--a throng of tiny specks, moving like stately birds, which, even as the eye watched, seemed to spread their wings upon the breeze that followed; to expand their bulk, and to glow, as the distance lessened, into the separate colours of each. . . .
Then once again bellowed the guns, heard now like the voice of articulate thunder five miles behind, rolling up the river as if to welcome this fleet upon its way; and still he kept his eyes upon those who came so swiftly.
There in front moved the great guard-ships, monsters of polished steel, decked at prow and stern with the huge banners that stood out straight behind in the swiftness of their coming, but which, even as he looked, flapped and bellied to this side and that as the speed decreased. Then, wheeling outwards, disclosing as they wheeled the insignia that each bore, the eagles of Germany, the lilies of France and the rest, the guard of thirty giants fell once more into line, half a mile apart, as those that followed came on, and waited; beating the air with the shimmer of their netted wings.
Then ship after ship came up, each wheeling in its turn and waiting, building now up with the speed of thought a vast semicircle, expanding ever more and more swiftly, as the watcher looked--himself halted now, with the royal barge on his right and his train of boats behind. There each in its turn pa.s.sed the air-navies of the Great Powers, come to bring their Lord with honour on his progress through the world--vast armaments of inconceivable war, enrolled at last in the service of the Prince of Peace.
Then when the movement was complete, and there lay there across the burning blue of the sky, five hundred feet in air, this vast curve of glittering splendour, ten miles from horn to horn, on came the great fleet that they had escorted.
There, then, the watcher saw two by two, first the barges of the Papal Orders, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre with its five-fold cross, and the Golden Spur, leading--huge medieval galleons, carved at prow and stem, each bearing its insignia; then came couple after couple bearing the Papal Court, followed closely by great barges, each with its canopy and throne, and the coat of the Cardinal whom each bore flying overhead.
And then a glorious sight.
For, moving alone in a solid phalanx, each vessel separated only by the s.p.a.ce necessary for close manoeuvring, came the royal barges of Europe, ranked on either side by a line of guard-boats--France, Austria, and Germany, then Belgium and Holland, then the Scandinavian kingdoms, then a crowd of lesser States from the Balkan, Greece, and the Black Sea; then the black-eagled barge of Russia, and finally the great galleons of Spain and Italy: and on each sat a royal figure beneath a canopy of state. And last of all moved a huge vessel, in scarlet and white, with a banner of white and gold and cross-keys at the prow; scarcely seen at first through the crowding craft, with a squadron of guard-ships coming after.
There, then, the man who had lost his memory sat motionless, and watched it all--this astounding display of inner grace transformed into glory at last, that Royalty which since first the Fisherman took his seat in Holy Rome, had little by little, through reverse and success, forced its way outwards on the world--the leaven hid in the meal till all was leavened. . . .
And it seemed to him as he looked, as if, through the splendour of the midday sun, the glitter of that sea of air-craft--through the pealing of the bells beneath and the shock of the guns and the shrill crying that filled the air--there moved other Presences, too, in yet a third medium than those of air and earth; as if diffused throughout this material plane was a world of more than matter and mind, more than of sense and perception--a world where all was reconciled and made at one--this clash of flesh and spirit--and that at last each answered to each, and spirit inspired flesh, and flesh expressed spirit. It seemed to him, for one blinding instant, as if at last he saw how distance was contained in a single point, colour in whiteness, and sound in silence, as at the very Word of Him who now at last had taken His power and reigned, whose Kingdom at last had come indeed, to whom in very truth All Power was given in heaven and earth. . . .
EPILOGUE
The white-skirted, clean-looking doctor came briskly and noiselessly into the little room that opened off Ward No. IV in the Westminster Hospital as the clock pointed to nine o"clock in the morning, and the nursing-sister stood up to receive him.
"Good morning, sister," he said. "Any change?"
"He seemed a little disturbed about an hour ago by the bells,"
she said. "But he hasn"t spoken at all."
Together they stood and looked down on the unconscious man. He lay there motionless with closed eyes, his unshaven cheek resting on his hand, his face fallen into folds and hollows, colourless and sallow. The red coverlet drawn up over his shoulder helped to emphasize his deadly pallor.
"It"s a curious case," said the doctor. "I"ve never seen coma in such a case last so long."
He still stared at him a moment or two; then he laid the back of his hand gently against the dying man"s cheek, then again he consulted through his gla.s.ses the chart that hung over the head of the bed.
"Will he recover consciousness before the end, doctor?"
"It"s very likely; it"s impossible to say. Send for me if there"s any change."
"I mayn"t send for a priest, doctor?" she said hesitatingly. "You know---"
He shook his head sharply.
"No, no. He distinctly refused, you remember. It"s impossible, sister. . . . I"m very sorry."
When he had gone, she sat down again, and drew out her beads furtively upon her lap.
It was a horrible position for her. She, a Catholic, knew now pretty well the history of this man--that he himself was a priest who had lost the faith, who had a.s.sociated himself with an historian who was writing a history of the Popes from what he called an impartial standpoint, who had, as the doctor said, distinctly and resentfully refused the suggestion that another priest should be sent to help him to make his peace before he died.
And, for her, as a convinced Catholic, the position had a terror that is simply inconceivable to those of a less positive faith.
She could do nothing more. . . . She said her beads.
There was a curious mixture of silence and sound here on this Easter Sunday in this bare, airy little ward, with the door closed, and the windows open only at the top. The room had a remote kind of atmosphere about it, obtained perhaps partly by the solidity of the walls, partly by the fact that it looked out on to a comparatively unfrequented lane, partly by the suggestiveness of a professional sick-room. The world was all about it; yet it seemed rather to this nurse, sitting alone at her prayers and duties, as if she had a window into the common world of life rather than that she actually was a part of it.
Even the sounds that entered here had this remote tone about them; the footsteps and talking of strayed holiday-makers, occasional fragmentary peals of bells, the striking of the clock in the high Victoria Tower--all these noises came into the room delicately and suggestively rather than as interruptions, yet distinct and noticeable because of the absence of the usual rush of traffic across the great square outside.
The nurse dozed a little over her beads. (She had been on duty since the evening before, and would not be relieved for another hour yet.) And it seemed to her, as so often in that half-sleep, half-wakefulness, when the drowsy brain knows all necessary things and awakes alert again in an instant at any unusual movement or sound, as if these sounds began to take on them tones of other causes than those of themselves.
It seemed, for example, as if the steady murmur were the shouting of phantom crowds at an immeasurable distance, punctuated now again by the noise of distant guns, as, somewhere round a corner a vehicle pa.s.sed over a crossing of cobble-stones; as if the bells of the churches rang with a deliberate purpose, to welcome or rejoice over some event . . . some entry of a king, she fancied, in a far-off city. Once even, so deep grew her drowsiness, she fancied herself looking down on some such city, herself up in the sunlight and air, floating on the cloudy vessel of her own sleep. . . .
"Pray for us sinners," she murmured, "now and in the hour of our death."
Then she awoke in earnest, and saw the eyes of the patient fixed intelligently upon her.
"Fetch a priest," he said.