Since that horrible instant when the door had closed in his face and the Cardinal had gone again as mysteriously as he had come--now three days ago--he had heard no hint that could tell him how things developed. He had not even dared to ask the taciturn servant in uniform who brought him food as to the fate of the old man.
For he knew with a certainty as clear as if he had seen the dreadful thing done, that his friend and master was dead--dead, as the Revolutionary Committee had said he would be, if he came with any message other than that of submission. As to the manner of his death he dared not even conjecture. It would be swift, at least. . . .
Ten thousand thoughts, recurring and recurring, like pictures thrown on a wall, ran past his attention as the hours went by. He saw the gathering of armaments--the horizon tinged by the gathering war-vessels of the air--the advance, the sudden storm of battle, the gigantic destruction from these vast engines of power of which he had learned nothing but their ghastly potentialities. Or he saw the advance of this desperate garrison, dispersing this way and that for their war upon the world--silent vessels, moving in the clouds, to Rome, to London, to Paris and Versailles, each capable of obliterating a city. Or he saw, again, the submission of the world to the caprice of these desperate children who feared nothing--not even death itself--who crouched like an ape in a powder-magazine, lighted match in hand, careless as to whether or no themselves died so long as the world died with them.
He formulated nothing; concluded nothing; he rejected every conjecture which temporarily constructed itself in his almost pa.s.sive mind. He did not even yet fully understand that the question he had asked of himself months before--the question that had tortured him so keenly--as to whether these Christians who ruled had not forgotten how to suffer--had been answered with dreadful distinctness. He just perceived that the young Roman prince had been gallant; that the old man had been more gallant still, since those to whom he came had already proved that they would keep their word. And now the third day was drawing to an end, and by midnight suspense would be over.
The fog still hung over the city; but towards sunset it lifted a little, and he raised his heavy head from his breast as he lay, half sitting, half lying, on the tumbled sofa and blankets on which he had slept, to see the red sunlight on the wall above him. It was a curious room to a man who had grown accustomed to modern ways; there was a faded carpet on the floor, paper on the walls, and the old-fashioned electric globes hung, each on its wire, from the whitewashed ceiling. He saw that it must be a survival, or perhaps a deliberate archaicism. . . .
The sunlight crept slowly up the wall. . . .
Then the door was unlocked from the outside, and he turned his head, to see James Hardy come smiling towards him.
(II)
"Good evening, Monsignor. I am ashamed that I have not paid you a visit before. But we have been very busy these days."
He sat down without offering to shake hands.
The priest saw, with one of those sudden inexplicable intuitions more certain than any acquired knowledge, two things: first, that his having been left alone for three days had been by deliberation and not carelessness; and second, that this visit to him only a few hours before the time of truce expired was equally deliberate. His brain was too confused for him to draw any definite conclusion from these facts; but he made at least one provisional decision, as swift as lightning, that he must hold his tongue.
"You have had an anxious time, I am afraid," went on the other.
"But so have we all. You must bear no malice, Monsignor."
The priest said nothing. He looked between his half-closed eyelids at the heavy, clean-shaven, clever face of the man who sat opposite him, the strong, capable and rather humorous mouth, his close-cut hair turning a little grey by the ears, watching for any sign of discomposure. But there was none at all.
The man glanced up, caught his eye, and smiled a little.
"Well, I am afraid you"re not altogether pleased with us. But you must bear in mind, Monsignor, that you"ve driven--" (he corrected his phrase)--"you drove us into a corner. I regret the deaths of the two envoys as much as you yourself. But we were forced to keep our word. Obviously your party did not believe us, or they would have communicated by other means. Well, we had to prove our sincerity." (He paused). "And we shall have to prove it again to-night, it seems."
Again there was silence.
"I think you"re foolish to take this line, Monsignor," went on the other briskly--"this not speaking to me, I mean. I"m quite willing to tell you all I know, if you care to ask me. I"ve not come to bully you or to triumph over you. And after all, you know, we might easily have treated you as an envoy, too. To be quite frank, it was I who pleaded for you. . . . Oh! not out of any tenderness; we have got past that. You Christians have taught us that. But I thought that so long as we kept our word we need not go beyond it. And it"s proved that I"m right. . . . Aren"t you curious to know why?"
The priest looked at him again.
"Well, we are going to send you back after midnight. You will have to witness the last scene, I am afraid, so that you can give a true account of it--the Emperor"s death, I mean."
He paused again, waiting for an answer. Then he stood up, at last, it seemed, p.r.i.c.ked into impatience.
"Kindly come with me, Monsignor," he said abruptly. "I have to take you before the Council."
(III)
It was a large hall, resembling a concert-room, into which the priest came at last, an hour later, under the escort of James Hardy and a couple of police, and he had plenty of time to observe it, as he stood waiting by the little door through which he stepped on to the back of the platform.
This platform stood at the upper end of the hall, and was set with a long semicircle of chairs and desks, as if for judges, and these were occupied by perhaps thirty persons, dressed, he saw, in dull colours, all alike. The dresses seemed curiously familiar; he supposed he must have seen them in pictures. Then he remembered a long while ago Father Jervis telling him that the Socialists resented the modern developments in matters of costume.
The President"s desk and seat were raised a little above the others, but from behind the priest could see nothing of him but his black gown and his rather long iron-grey hair; he seemed to be answering in rapid German some question that one of his colleagues had just put to him.
The rest of the hall was almost empty. A table stood at the foot of the platform, and here were three or four of the usual recording machines; a dozen men sat here too, some writing, some listening, leaning back in their chairs. In the middle, on the opposite side of the table, stood a structure resembling a witness-box, ascended by two steps, railed in on the three other sides. A man with a pointed grey beard was leaving the box as the priest came in. Standing about the hall also were perhaps twenty other persons apparently listening to the President or waiting their turn. There were tall doors at the end of the hall, closed and guarded by police, and in the middle of each of the long sides two other doors, also closed, communicating with other rooms and pa.s.sages, in one of which the priest had waited just now until the Council could see him.
Except for the rapid, heavy voice of the President the hall was very quiet, and from the very silence and motionlessness of those present there exhaled a certain air of tenseness. It would have been impossible for any intelligent person not to notice it, and for the priest, with his nerves strung, as they now were, to an extreme pitch of sensitiveness and attention, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly significant. Of what it signified he had no idea, beyond the knowledge he already possessed--that the hours were running out, and that midnight would see a decisive event which, though it must mean ultimately the ruin of every person present, might, for all that, change the line of the world"s development.
A protest so desperate as this could not but have a tremendous effect upon human sentiment. He had caught a glimpse an hour before, as he whirled through the streets, far up against the luminous slay westwards, of a string of floating specks, which he knew to be the guard-boats, strung out now, night and day, in a vast circle round the city. At midnight they would surely move. . . .
Dark had already fallen outside, but the hall was as light as day with the hidden electric burners above the cornices, and he could see not only the faces, but the very expressions that characterized them. One thing at least was common to them all--a silent, fierce excitement. . . .
It would be about ten minutes before the priest"s turn came to face the Council. It seemed that the member to whom the President was speaking was not satisfied, and question and answer, all in rapid, unintelligible German, went on without intermission. Once or twice there was a murmur of applause, and more than once the President beat his hand heavily and emphatically upon the desk before him to enforce his point. The priest guessed that the unanimity was not perhaps as perfect as the world had been given to believe. However, guessing was useless. The President leaned back at last, and Hardy stepped forward to his chair and whispered. The President nodded, and the next moment, at a sign from Hardy, the two police urged the priest forward by the arms across the platform, down the steps, and so round to the right up into the witness-box. Then the President, who had still been whispering behind his hand, turned abruptly in his chair and faced him.
Monsignor related afterwards what an extraordinary moment that had been. His nerves were already tight-stretched and his expectation was at the highest; but the face of this man who now looked at him (tremendous though he knew such a personality must be, which could conceive and drive through such a revolt as this),--the face of him was beyond all imagining.
In the fashion of the day it was clean-shaven, and the absence of hair, except where that of his head framed the face, increased the impressions of those lines and shadow. It was a priestly face, saw Monsignor, with all the power and searchingness of one who can deal with living souls; but the face of a fallen priest.
In complexion it was sallow, but the sallowness of health, not of weakness; full-shaped, but without being fat; the lips were straight and thin, the nose sharp and jutting and well curved, and the black eyes blazed at him with immense power from beneath heavy brows. His hair was brushed straight back from the forehead, and fell rather long behind. The face resembled a carefully modelled mask, through the eyes of which alone the tremendous life was visible.
The priest met those eyes straight for an instant, then he lowered his own, knowing that he could not be wholly himself if he looked that man in the face.
He was surprised to hear words of English uttered. He looked up again, and there was Hardy speaking, from beside the President"s chair.
"Monsignor, you would not answer me just now. Now that I am speaking in the Council"s name, will you consent to do so?"
"I will answer what I think right to answer."
There was a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt in Hardy"s voice as he went on.
"You need not be afraid, Monsignor. We do not extort answers by the rack. I only wished to know if you would be reasonable."
The priest said nothing.
"Very good, then. . . . First we will tell you our intentions. At midnight, as you know, we keep our word, and the Emperor will have to go the way of the others. It is regrettable, but the Christians do not seem to understand even yet that we are in earnest. You will have to be present at that scene, I am sorry to say; but you can comfort yourself by ministering to your co-religionist. He has not had a priest admitted to him since his arrest.
"Immediately afterwards you will be set at liberty, and put on board the air-boat on which you travelled from Rome, with the same driver who brought you here, on one single condition. That condition is that you go straight to the Holy Father, tell him all that you have seen, and take with you one or two little objects."
He paused and beckoned to some one behind. A man came forward with a little box which he laid on the table. Hardy opened it.
"This is the box you are to take. Yes; I see that you recognize them. They are the biretta, the skullcap, the cross, and the ring of the late Cardinal Bellairs. There are also in this box the ring and a medal belonging to the late Prince Otteone. . . . You will take these with you as pledges of what you say. . . . Will you consent to do this?"
The priest bowed. For the moment he was unable to speak.
"You will also tell the Holy Father," went on the other, replacing, as he spoke, the things in the box, "what you have seen of our dispositions. You will say that you saw us entirely resolute and unafraid. We do not fear anybody, Monsignor--not anything at all; I think you understand that by now.
"You will have a letter, of course, to take with you. It will contain our final terms. Because--(and I a.s.sure you that you are the first of the outside world to hear this news)--because we have decided to extend our patience for one more week. We shall, during that week, in order to prove the genuineness of our intentions, make a raid upon a certain city and, we hope, destroy it. (Naturally, I shall not inform you where that city stands.) And if, at the end of that week, our former terms are not accepted, we shall carry out our promises to the full. You may also add," he went on more deliberately, "that our party is represented in every capital of Europe, and that these may be expected to act in the same way as that in which we have acted, as soon as the week expires. We have no objection to telling you this: our plans are completely made, and no precautions on your side can hinder them. Is that clear, Monsignor?"
"Yes," said the priest.
"You are satisfied that we mean what we say?"