He was lodged in the Government buildings, adapted a few years before from the old temple of the Christian Scientists; and each day in the rotunda he sat hour after hour with keen-faced Americans, and the few Europeans who had accompanied the emigration boats that now streamed in continually.
He flung himself into the dreary work, such as it was, with all his power; for though he had little responsibility, he was there as the accredited agent of the English ecclesiastical authorities, and his business was to show as much alacrity and sympathy as possible.
The city was, indeed, a scene of incredible confusion; and a very strong force of police was needed to prevent open friction between the belated and aggrieved Catholics for whom Boston would in future be impossible as a home, and who had not yet faced the need of migrating, and the new, very dogmatic inhabitants who already regarded the city as their own. All legal arrangements had, of course, been made before the first emigrants set foot on the continent; but the redistribution of the city, the sale of farms, the settling of interminable disputes between various nationalities--all these things, sifted although they were through agents and officials, yet came up to the central board in sufficient numbers to occupy the members for a full nine hours a day.
It was at the end of the fourth day that Monsignor went round the city in a car, partly to get some air, and partly to see for himself how things were settling down.
Of course, as he told himself afterwards, he scarcely had a fair opportunity of judging how a Socialist State would be when the machinery was in running order. Yet it seemed to him that, making all allowances for confusion and noise and choked streets and the rest, underneath it all was a spirit strangely and drearily unlike that to which he was becoming accustomed in Europe. The very faces of the people seemed different.
He stopped for a while in the quarter to which the English had been a.s.signed--that which in old Boston had been, he learned, the Italian quarter. Here, in the little square where he halted, everything was surprisingly in order. The open s.p.a.ce, paved with concrete, was unoccupied by any signs of moving in; the houses were trim and neat, new painted for the most part; and people seemed to be going about their business with an air of quiet orderliness. Certainly American arrangements, he thought, were marvellously efficient, enabling as they did some fifteen hundred persons to settle down into new houses within the s.p.a.ce of four days. (He had learned something, while he sat on the central board, of the elaborate system of tickets and officials and enquiry offices by which such miraculous swiftness had been made possible.)
Here at least they were an orderly population, going in and out of the houses, visiting in one corner of the square the vast general store that had been provided beforehand, presenting their pledges, which, at any rate for the present, were to take the place of the European money that the emigrants had brought with them.
He halted the car here, and leaning forward, began to look round him carefully.
The first thing that struck him was a negative emotion--a sense that something external was lacking. He presently perceived what this was.
In European towns, one of the details to which he had become by now altogether accustomed was the presence, in every street or square at which he looked, of some emblem or statue or picture of a religious nature. Here there was nothing. The straight pavements ran round the square; the straight houses rose from them, straight-windowed and straight-doored. All was admirably sanitary and clean and wholesome. He could see through the windows of the house opposite which his car was drawn up the clean walls within, the decent furniture, and the rest. But there was absolutely nothing to give a hint of anything beyond bodily health and sanitation and decency. In London, or Lourdes, or Rome there would at least have been a reminder--to put it very mildly--of other possibilities than these: of a Heavenly Mother, a Suffering Man; a hint that solid animal health was not the only conceivable ideal. It was a tiny detail; he blamed himself for noticing it. He reminded himself that here, at any rate, was real liberty as he had conceived it.
He began to scrutinize the faces of the pa.s.sers-by, sheltering himself behind his elbow that he might not be noticed--appearing as if he were waiting for some one. Women pa.s.sed by, strong-faced and business-like; men came up and pa.s.sed, talking in twos or threes. He even watched for some while a couple of children who sat gravely together on a doorstep. (That reminded him of the meeting of to-morrow, when certain educational matters had to be finally decided; he remembered the proposed _curriculum_, sketched out in some papers that he had to study this evening--an exceedingly sound and useful _curriculum_, calculated to make the pupils satisfactorily informed persons.)
Again and again he told himself that it was fancy that made him see in the faces of these people--people, it must be remembered, who were not commonplace, but rather enthusiasts for their cause, since they preferred exile to a life under the Christian system--that made him see a kind of blankness and heaviness corresponding to that which the aspect of their street presented.
Many of the faces were intellectual, especially of the men--there was no doubt of that; and all were wholesome-looking and healthy, just as this little square was sensibly built and planned, and the houses soundly constructed.
Yet, as he looked at them _en ma.s.se_, and compared them with his general memories of the type of face that he saw in London streets, there was certainly a difference. He could conceive these people making speeches, recording votes, discussing matters of public interest with great gravity and consideration; he could conceive them distributing alms to the needy after careful and scientific enquiry, administering justice; he could imagine them even, with an effort, inflamed with political pa.s.sion, denouncing, appealing. . . . But it appeared to him (to his imagination rather, as he angrily told himself) that he could not believe them capable of any absolutely reckless crime or reckless act of virtue. They could calculate, they could plan, they had almost mechanically perfect ideas of justice; they could even love and hate after their kind. But it was inconceivable that their pa.s.sion, either for good or evil, could wholly carry them away. In one word, _there was no light behind these faces_, no indication of an incomprehensible Power greater than themselves, no ideal higher than that generated by the common sense of the mult.i.tude. In short, they seemed to him to have all the impa.s.sivity of the Christian atmosphere, with none of its hidden fire.
He gave the signal presently for the driver to move on, and himself leaned back in his seat with closed eyes. He felt terribly alone in a terrible world. Was the whole human race, then, utterly without heart? Had civilization reached such a pitch of perfection--one part through supernatural forces, and the other through human evolution--that there was no longer any room for a man with feelings and emotions and an individuality of his own? Yet he could no longer conceal from himself that the other was better than this--that it was better to be heartless through too vivid a grasp of eternal realities, than through an equally vivid grasp of earthly facts.
As he reached the door of the great buildings where he lodged, and climbed wearily out, the porter ran out, hat in hand, holding a little green paper.
"Monsignor," he said, "this arrived an hour ago. We did not know where you were."
He opened it there and then. It contained half a dozen words in code. He took it upstairs with him, strangely agitated, and there deciphered it. It bade him leave everything, come instantly to Rome, and join the Cardinal.
CHAPTER II
(I)
There was dead silence on the long staircase of the Vatican, leading up to the Cardinal Secretary"s rooms, as Monsignor toiled up within half an hour of his arrival at the stage outside the city. A car was in waiting for him there, had whirled him first to the old palace where he had stayed nine months ago with Father Jervis; and then, on finding that Cardinal Bellairs had been unexpectedly sent for to the Vatican, he had gone on there immediately, according to the instructions that had been left with the _majordomo_.
He knew all now; wireless messages had streamed in hour after hour during the flight across the Atlantic. At Naples, where the volor had first touched land, the papers already mentioned full and exhaustive accounts of the outbreak, with the latest reports; and by the time that he reached Rome he was as well informed of the real facts of the case as were any who were not in the inner circle of those who knew.
The Swiss guard presented his fantastic halberd, as he pa.s.sed in panting after his climb; a man in scarlet livery took his hat and cloak; another preceded him through the first anteroom, where an ecclesiastic received him; and with this priest he pa.s.sed on through the second and third rooms up to the door of the inner chamber. The priest pushed the door open for him and he went in alone; the door closed noiselessly behind him. The room was the same as that which he remembered, all gold and red damask, lighted from the roof, with the great bra.s.s-inlaid writing table at the farther end, and the broad settee against the right-hand wall, but it seemed to him in his apprehensiveness that the solemnity was greater and the hushed silence even deeper. Two figures sat side by side on the settee, each in the scarlet ferraiuola of ceremony. One, Cardinal Bellairs, looked up at him and nodded, even smiling a little; the other stood up and bowed slightly, before extending his hand to be kissed. This second figure was a great personality--Italian by birth, an extraordinary linguist, a very largely made man, both stout and tall, with a head of thick and perfectly white hair. He had been a "Papabile" at the last election; and, it was thought, was certain of the papacy some day, even though it was unusual that a Secretary of State should succeed. He had a large, well-cut face, rather yellowish in colour, with very bright, half-veiled black eyes.
Monsignor kissed the ring without genuflecting, as the custom was in the Vatican, and sat down on the chair indicated.
No one spoke for a moment.
"How much have you heard, Monsignor?" asked Cardinal Bellairs abruptly.
"I have heard that the Socialists have seized Berlin and the Emperor; that the city is fortified; that there have been two ma.s.sacres; and that the Emperor"s life is threatened unless the Powers grant all the terms asked within . . . within four days from now."
"Have you heard of the death of Prince Otteone?"
"No, your Eminence."
"Prince Otteone was executed last night," said the Cardinal simply. "He begged to go as the representative of the Holy Father to treat for terms. They said they were not there to treat, but to grant terms. And they say that they will do the same for every envoy who does not bring a message of complete submission. That will be known everywhere by midday."
Again there was silence. The Cardinal Secretary glanced from one face to the other, as if hesitating. Monsignor made no attempt to speak. He knew that was not his business.
"Can you guess why I have sent for you, Monsignor?"
"No, your Eminence."
"I am leaving for Berlin myself to-night. The Holy Father kindly allows me to do so. I wish to leave some instructions about English affairs before I go."
For a moment the priest"s mind was unable to take in all the significance of this. The Cardinal"s air was of one who announces that he is going into the country for a few days. There was not the faintest sign even of excitement in his manner or voice.
Before the priest could speak the Cardinal went on.
"Your Eminence, I have told you what confidence I rest in Monsignor Masterman. He has all the affairs of the English Church in his hands. And I desire that, if possible, he should be appointed Vicar-Capitular in the event of my death."
The Secretary of State bowed.
"I am sure----" he began.
"Your Eminence," cried the priest suddenly, "it"s impossible . . . it"s impossible."
The Englishman looked at him sharply.
"It is what I wish," he said.
Monsignor collected himself with a violent effort. He could not, even afterwards, trace the exact process by which he had arrived so swiftly at his determination. He supposed it was partly the drama of the situation--the sense that big demands were in the air; partly nervous excitement; partly a certain distaste with life that was growing on him; but chiefly and foremost a pa.s.sionate and devoted affection for his chief, which he had never till this instant suspected in himself. He only perceived, as clearly as in a vision, that this gallant old man must not be allowed to go alone, and that he--he who had criticized and rebelled against the brutality of the world--must go with him.
"Your Eminence," he said, "it is impossible, because I must come with you to Berlin."
The Cardinal smiled and lifted his hand, as if to an impetuous child.
"My dear fellow----"
Monsignor turned to the other. He felt cool and positive, as if a breeze had fanned away his excitement.