CHAPTER
VIII
I
Long before dawn
on the first morning of the New Year the approaches to the Abbey were already
blocked. Victoria Street, Great George Street, Whitehall - even Millbank Street
itself - were full and motionless. Broad Sanctuary, divided by the low-walled
motor-track, was itself cut into great blocks and wedges of people by the ways
which the police kept open for the passage of important personages, and Palace
Yard was kept rigidly clear except for one island, occupied by a stand which
was itself full from top to bottom and end to end. All roofs and parapets which
commanded a view of the Abbey were also one mass of heads. Overhead, like
solemn moons, burned the white lights of the electric globes.
It was not known
at exactly what hour the tumult had steadied itself to definite purpose, except
to a few weary controllers of the temporary turnstiles which had been erected
the evening before. It had been announced a week previously that, in
consideration of the enormous demand for seats, all persons who presented their
worship-ticket at an authorised office, and followed the directions issued by
the police, would be accounted as having fulfilled the duties of citizenship in
that respect, and it was generally made known that it was the Government's
intention to toll the great bell of the Abbey at the beginning of the ceremony
and at the incensing of the image, during which period silence must be as far
as possible preserved by all those within hearing.
London had gone
completely mad on the announcement of the Catholic plot on the afternoon
before. The secret had leaked out about fourteen o'clock, an hour after the
betrayal of the scheme to Mr. Snowford; and practically all commercial
activities had ceased on the instant. By fifteen-and-a-half all stores were
closed, the Stock Exchange, the City offices, the West End establishments - all
had as by irresistible impulse suspended business, and from within two hours
after noon until nearly midnight, when the police had been adequately
reinforced and enabled to deal with the situation, whole mobs and armies of
men, screaming squadrons of women, troops of frantic youths, had paraded the
streets, howling, denouncing, and murdering. It was not known how many deaths
had taken place, but there was scarcely a street without the signs of outrage.
Westminster Cathedral had been sacked, every altar overthrown, indescribable
indignities performed there. An unknown priest had scarcely been able to
consume the Blessed Sacrament before he was seized and throttled; the
Archbishop with eleven priests and two bishops had been hanged at the north end
of the church, thirty-five convents had been destroyed, St. George's Cathedral
burned to the ground; and it was reported even, by the evening papers, that it
was believed that, for the first time since the introduction of Christianity
into England, there was not one Tabernacle left within twenty miles of the
Abbey. "London," explained the New People, in huge headlines,
"was cleansed at last of dingy and fantastic nonsense."
It was known at
about fifteen-and-a-half o'clock that at least seventy volors had left for
Rome, and half-an-hour later that Berlin had reinforced them by sixty more. At
midnight, fortunately at a time when the police had succeeded in shepherding
the crowds into some kind of order, the news was flashed on to cloud and
placard alike that the grim work was done, and that Rome had ceased to exist.
The early morning papers added a few details, pointing out, of course, the
coincidence of the fall with the close of the year, relating how, by an
astonishing chance, practically all the heads of the hierarchy throughout the
world had been assembled in the Vatican which had been the first object of
attack, and how these, in desperation, it was supposed, had refused to leave
the City when the news came by wireless telegraphy that the punitive force was
on its way. There was not a building left in Rome; the entire place, Leonine
City, Trastevere, suburbs - everything was gone; for the volors, poised at an
immense height, had parcelled out the City beneath them with extreme care,
before beginning to drop the explosives; and five minutes after the first roar
from beneath and the first burst of smoke and flying fragments, the thing was
finished. The volors had then dispersed in every direction, pursuing the motor
and rail-tracks along which the population had attempted to escape so soon as
the news was known; and it was supposed that not less than thirty thousand
belated fugitives had been annihilated by this foresight. It was true, remarked
the Studio, that many treasures of incalculable value had been destroyed, but
this was a cheap price to pay for the final and complete extermination of the
Catholic pest. "There comes a point," it remarked, "when
destruction is the only cure for a vermin-infested house," and it
proceeded to observe that now that the Pope with the entire College of
Cardinals, all the ex-Royalties of Europe, all the most frantic religionists
from the inhabited world who had taken up their abode in the "Holy
City" were gone at a stroke, a recrudescence of the superstition was
scarcely to be feared elsewhere. Yet care must even now be taken against any
relenting. Catholics (if any were left bold enough to attempt it) must no
longer be allowed to take any kind of part in the life of any civilised
country. So far as messages had come in from other countries, there was but one
chorus of approval at what had been done.
A few papers
regretted the incident, or rather the spirit which had lain behind it. It was
not seemly, they said, that Humanitarians should have recourse to violence; yet
not one pretended that anything could be felt but thanksgiving for the general
result. Ireland, too, must be brought into line; they must not dally any
longer.
* * * * *
It was now brightening slowly towards dawn, and
beyond the river through the faint wintry haze a crimson streak or two began to
burn. But all was surprisingly quiet, for this crowd, tired out with an
all-night watch, chilled by the bitter cold, and intent on what lay before
them, had no energy left for useless effort. Only from packed square and street
and lane went up a deep, steady murmur like the sound of the sea a mile away,
broken now and again by the hoot and clang of a motor and the rush of its
passage as it tore eastwards round the circle through Broad Sanctuary and
vanished citywards. And the light broadened and the electric globes sickened
and paled, and the haze began to clear a little, showing, not the fresh blue
that had been hoped for from the cold of the night, but a high, colourless
vault of cloud, washed with grey and faint rose-colour, as the sun came up, a
ruddy copper disc, beyond the river.
* * * * *
At nine o'clock the excitement rose a degree
higher. The police between Whitehall and the Abbey, looking from their high
platforms strung along the route, whence they kept watch and controlled the
wire palisadings, showed a certain activity, and a minute later a police-car
whirled through the square between the palings, and vanished round the Abbey
towers. The crowd murmured and shuffled and began to expect, and a cheer was
raised when a moment later four more cars appeared, bearing the Government
insignia, and disappeared in the same direction. These were the officials, they
said, going to Dean's Yard, where the procession would assemble.
At about a
quarter to ten the crowd at the west end of Victoria Street began to raise its
voice in a song, and by the time that was over, and the bells had burst out
from the Abbey towers, a rumour had somehow made its entrance that Felsenburgh
was to be present at the ceremony. There was no assignable reason for this,
neither then nor afterwards; in fact, the Evening Star declared that it was one
more instance of the astonishing instinct of human beings en masse; for it was
not until an hour later that even the Government were made aware of the facts.
Yet the truth remained that at half-past ten one continuous roar went up,
drowning even the brazen clamour of the bells, reaching round to Whitehall and
the crowded pavements of Westminster Bridge, demanding Julian Felsenburgh. Yet
there had been absolutely no news of the President of Europe for the last
fortnight, beyond an entirely unsupported report that he was somewhere in the
East.
And all the while
the motors poured from all directions towards the Abbey and disappeared under
the arch into Dean's Yard, bearing those fortunate persons whose tickets
actually admitted them to the church itself. Cheers ran and rippled along the
lines as the great men were recognised - Lord Pemberton, Oliver Brand and his
wife, Mr. Caldecott, Maxwell, Snowford, with the European delegates - even
melancholy-faced Mr. Francis himself, the Government ceremoniarius, received a
greeting. But by a quarter to eleven, when the pealing bells paused, the stream
had stopped, the barriers issued out to stop the roads, the wire palisadings
vanished, and the crowd for an instant, ceasing its roaring, sighed with relief
at the relaxed pressure, and surged out into the roadways. Then once more the
roaring began for Julian Felsenburgh.
The sun was now
high, still a copper disc, above the Victoria Tower, but paler than an hour
ago; the whiteness of the Abbey, the heavy greys of Parliament House, the ten
thousand tints of house-roofs, heads, streamers, placards began to disclose
themselves.
A single bell
tolled five minutes to the hour, and the moments slipped by, until once more
the bell stopped, and to the ears of those within hearing of the great west
doors came the first blare of the huge organ, reinforced by trumpets. And then,
as sudden and profound as the hush of death, there fell an enormous silence.
II
As the
five-minutes bell began, sounding like a continuous wind-note in the great
vaults overhead, solemn and persistent, Mabel drew a long breath and leaned
back in her seat from the rigid position in which for the last half-hour she
had been staring out at the wonderful sight. She seemed to herself to have
assimilated it at last, to be herself once more, to have drunk her fill of the
triumph and the beauty. She was as one who looks upon a summer sea on the
morning after a storm. And now the climax was at hand.
From end to end
and side to side the interior of the Abbey presented a great broken mosaic of
human faces; living slopes, walls, sections and curves. The south transept
directly opposite to her, from pavement to rose window, was one sheet of heads;
the floor was paved with them, cut in two by the scarlet of the gangway leading
from the chapel of St. Faith - on the right, the choir beyond the open space
before the sanctuary was a mass of white figures, scarved and surpliced; the
high organ gallery, beneath which the screen had been removed, was crowded with
them, and, far down beneath, the dim nave stretched the same endless pale
living pavement to the shadow beneath the west window. Between every group of
columns behind the choir-stalls, before her, to right, left, and behind, were
platforms contrived in the masonry; and the exquisite roof, fan-tracery and
soaring capital, alone gave the eye an escape from humanity. The whole vast
space was full, it seemed, of delicate sunlight that streamed in from the
artificial light set outside each window, and poured the ruby and the purple
and the blue from the old glass in long shafts of colour across the dusty air,
and in broken patches on the faces and dresses behind. The murmur of ten
thousand voices filled the place, supplying, it seemed, a solemn accompaniment
to that melodious note that now pulsed above it. And finally, more significant
than all, was the empty carpeted sanctuary at her feet, the enormous altar with
its flight of steps, the gorgeous curtain and the great untenanted sedilia.
* * * * *
Mabel needed some such reassurance, for last night,
until the coming of Oliver, had passed for her as a kind of appalling waking
dream. From the first shock of what she had seen outside the church, through
those hours of waiting, with the knowledge that this was the way in which the
Spirit of Peace asserted its superiority, up to that last moment when, in her
husband's arms, she had learned of the Fall of Rome, it had appeared to her as
if her new world had suddenly corrupted about her. It was incredible, she told
herself, that this ravening monster, dripping blood from claws and teeth, that
had arisen roaring in the night, could be the Humanity that had become her God.
She had thought revenge and cruelty and slaughter to be the brood of Christian
superstition, dead and buried under the new-born angel of light, and now it
seemed that the monsters yet stirred and lived. All the evening she had sat,
walked, lain about her quiet house with the horror heavy about her, flinging
open a window now and again in the icy air to listen with clenched hands to the
cries and the roarings of the mob that raged in the streets beneath, the
clanks, the yells and the hoots of the motor-trains that tore up from the
country to swell the frenzy of the city - to watch the red glow of fire, the
volumes of smoke that heaved up from the burning chapels and convents.
She had
questioned, doubted, resisted her doubts, flung out frantic acts of faith,
attempted to renew the confidence that she attained in her meditation, told
herself that traditions died slowly; she had knelt, crying out to the spirit of
peace that lay, as she knew so well, at the heart of man, though overwhelmed
for the moment by evil passion. A line or two ran in her head from one of the
old Victorian poets:
You doubt If any
one Could think or bid it? How could it come about?… Who did it? Not men! Not
here! Oh! not beneath the sun… The torch that smouldered till the cup o'er-ran
The wrath of God which is the wrath of Man!
She had even
contemplated death, as she had told her husband - the taking of her own life,
in a great despair with the world. Seriously she had thought of it; it was an
escape perfectly in accord with her morality. The useless and agonising were
put out of the world by common consent; the Euthanasia houses witnessed to it.
Then why not she?… For she could not bear it!… Then Oliver had come, she had
fought her way back to sanity and confidence; and the phantom had gone again.
How sensible and
quiet he had been, she was beginning to tell herself now, as the quiet
influence of this huge throng in this glorious place of worship possessed her
once more - how reasonable in his explanation that man was even now only
convalescent and therefore liable to relapse. She had told herself that again
and again during the night, but it had been different when he had said so. His
personality had once more prevailed; and the name of Felsenburgh had finished
the work.
"If He were
but here!" she sighed. But she knew He was far away.
* * * * *
It was not until a quarter to eleven that she
understood that the crowds outside were clamouring for Him too, and that
knowledge reassured her yet further. They knew, then, these wild tigers, where
their redemption lay; they understood what was their ideal, even if they had
not attained to it. Ah! if He were but here, there would be no more question:
the sullen waves would sink beneath His call of peace, the hazy clouds lift,
the rumble die to silence. But He was away - away on some strange business.
Well; He knew His work. He would surely come soon again to His children who
needed Him so terribly.
* * * * *
She had the good fortune to be alone in a crowd.
Her neighbour, a grizzled old man with his daughters beyond, was her only
neighbour, and a stranger. At her left rose up the red-covered barricade over
which she could see the sanctuary and the curtain; and her seat in the tribune,
raised some eight feet above the floor, removed her from any possibility of
conversation. She was thankful for that: she did not want to talk; she wanted
only to control her faculties in silence, to reassert her faith, to look out
over this enormous throng gathered to pay homage to the great Spirit whom they
had betrayed, to renew her own courage and faithfulness. She wondered what the
preacher would say, whether there would be any note of penitence. Maternity was
his subject - that benign aspect of universal life - tenderness, love, quiet,
receptive, protective passion, the spirit that soothes rather than inspires,
that busies itself with peaceful tasks, that kindles the lights and fires of
home, that gives sleep, food and welcome…
The bell stopped,
and in the instant before the music began she heard, clear above the murmur
within, the roar of the crowds outside, who still demanded their God. Then,
with a crash, the huge organ awoke, pierced by the cry of the trumpets and the
maddening throb of drums. There was no delicate prelude here, no slow stirring
of life rising through labyrinths of mystery to the climax of sight - here
rather was full-orbed day, the high noon of knowledge and power, the dayspring
from on high, dawning in mid-heaven. Her heart quickened to meet it, and her
reviving confidence, still convalescent, stirred and smiled, as the tremendous
chords blared overhead, telling of triumph full-armed. God was man, then, after
all - a God who last night had faltered for an hour, but who rose again on this
morning of a new year, scattering mists, dominant over his own passion,
all-compelling and all-beloved. God was man, and Felsenburgh his Incarnation!
Yes, she must believe that! She did believe that!
Then she saw how
already the long procession was winding up beneath the screen, and by
imperceptible art the light grew yet more acutely beautiful. They were coming,
then, those ministers of a pure worship; grave men who knew in what they
believed, and who, even if they did not at this moment thrill with feeling (for
she knew that in this respect her husband for one did not), yet believed the
principles of this worship and recognised their need of expression for the
majority of mankind - coming slowly up in fours and pairs and units, led by
robed vergers, rippling over the steps, and emerging again into the coloured
sunlight in all their bravery of Masonic apron, badge and jewel. Surely here
was reassurance enough.
* * * * *
The sanctuary now held a figure or two.
Anxious-faced Mr. Francis, in his robes of office, came gravely down the steps
and stood awaiting the procession, directing with almost imperceptible motions
his satellites who hovered about the aisles ready to point this way and that to
the advancing stream; and the western-most seats were already beginning to
fill, when on a sudden she recognised that something had happened.
Just now the
roaring of the mob outside had provided a kind of underbass to the music
within, imperceptible except to sub-consciousness, but clearly discernible in
its absence; and this absence was now a fact.
At first she
thought that the signal of beginning worship had hushed them; and then, with an
indescribable thrill, she remembered that in all her knowledge only one thing
had ever availed to quiet a turbulent crowd. Yet she was not sure; it might be
an illusion. Even now the mob might be roaring still, and she only deaf to it;
but again with an ecstasy that was very near to agony she perceived that the
murmur of voices even within the building had ceased, and that some great wave
of emotion was stirring the sheets and slopes of faces before her as a wind
stirs wheat. A moment later, and she was on her feet, gripping the rail, with
her heart like an over-driven engine beating pulses of blood, furious and
insistent, through every vein; for with great rushing surge that sounded like a
sigh, heard even above the triumphant tumult overhead, the whole enormous
assemblage had risen to its feet.
Confusion seemed
to break out in the orderly procession. She saw Mr. Francis run forward
quickly, gesticulating like a conductor, and at his signal the long line swayed
forward, split, recoiled, and again slid swiftly forward, breaking as it did so
into twenty streams that poured along the seats and filled them in a moment.
Men ran and pushed, aprons flapped, hands beckoned, all without coherent words.
There was a knocking of feet, the crash of an overturned chair, and then, as if
a god had lifted his hand for quiet, the music ceased abruptly, sending a wild
echo that swooned and died in a moment; a great sigh filled its place, and, in
the coloured sunshine that lay along the immense length of the gangway that ran
open now from west to east, far down in the distant nave, a single figure was
seen advancing.
III
What Mabel saw
and heard and felt from eleven o'clock to half-an-hour after noon on that first
morning of the New Year she could never adequately remember. For the time she
lost the continuous consciousness of self, the power of reflection, for she was
still weak from her struggle; there was no longer in her the process by which
events are stored, labelled and recorded; she was no more than a being who
observed as it were in one long act, across which considerations played at
uncertain intervals. Eyes and ear seemed her sole functions, communicating
direct with a burning heart.
* * * * *
She did not even know at what point her senses told
her that this was Felsenburgh. She seemed to have known it even before he
entered, and she watched Him as in complete silence He came deliberately up the
red carpet, superbly alone, rising a step or two at the entrance of the choir,
passing on and up before her. He was in his English judicial dress of scarlet
and black, but she scarcely noticed it. For her, too, no one else existed but,
He; this vast assemblage was gone, poised and transfigured in one vibrating
atmosphere of an immense human emotion. There was no one, anywhere, but Julian
Felsenburgh. Peace and light burned like a glory about Him.
For an instant
after passing he disappeared beyond the speaker's tribune, and the instant
after reappeared once more, coming up the steps. He reached his place - she
could see His profile beneath her and slightly to the left, pure and keen as
the blade of a knife, beneath His white hair. He lifted one white-furred
sleeve, made a single motion, and with a surge and a rumble, the ten thousand
were seated. He motioned again and with a roar they were on their feet.
Again there was a
silence. He stood now, perfectly still, His hands laid together on the rail,
and His face looking steadily before Him; it seemed as if He who had drawn all
eyes and stilled all sounds were waiting until His domination were complete,
and there was but one will, one desire, and that beneath His hand. Then He
began to speak…
* * * * *
In this again, as Mabel perceived afterwards, there
was no precise or verbal record within her of what he said; there was no
conscious process by which she received, tested, or approved what she heard.
The nearest image under which she could afterwards describe her emotions to
herself, was that when He spoke it was she who was speaking. Her own thoughts,
her predispositions, her griefs, her disappointment, her passion, her hopes - all
these interior acts of the soul known scarcely even to herself, down even, it
seemed, to the minutest whorls and eddies of thought, were, by this man, lifted
up, cleansed, kindled, satisfied and proclaimed. For the first time in her life
she became perfectly aware of what human nature meant; for it was her own heart
that passed out upon the air, borne on that immense voice. Again, as once
before for a few moments in Paul's House, it seemed that creation, groaning so
long, had spoken articulate words at last - had come to growth and coherent
thought and perfect speech. Yet then He had spoken to men; now it was Man
Himself speaking. It was not one man who spoke there, it was Man - Man
conscious of his origin, his destiny, and his pilgrimage between, Man sane
again after a night of madness - knowing his strength, declaring his law,
lamenting in a voice as eloquent as stringed instruments his own failure to
correspond. It was a soliloquy rather than an oration. Rome had fallen, English
and Italian streets had run with blood, smoke and flame had gone up to heaven,
because man had for an instant sunk back to the tiger. Yet it was done, cried
the great voice, and there was no repentance; it was done, and ages hence man
must still do penance and flush scarlet with shame to remember that once he
turned his back on the risen light.
There was no
appeal to the lurid, no picture of the tumbling palaces, the running figures,
the coughing explosions, the shaking of the earth and the dying of the doomed.
It was rather with those hot hearts shouting in the English and German streets,
or aloft in the winter air of Italy, the ugly passions that warred there, as
the volors rocked at their stations, generating and fulfilling revenge, paying
back plot with plot, and violence with violence. For there, cried the voice,
was man as he had been, fallen in an instant to the cruel old ages before he
had learned what he was and why.
There was no
repentance, said the voice again, but there was something better; and as the
hard, stinging tones melted, the girl's dry eyes of shame filled in an instant
with tears. There was something better - the knowledge of what crimes man was
yet capable of, and the will to use that knowledge. Rome was gone, and it was a
lamentable shame; Rome was gone, and the air was the sweeter for it; and then
in an instant, like the soar of a bird, He was up and away - away from the
horrid gulf where He had looked just now, from the fragments of charred bodies,
and tumbled houses and all the signs of man's disgrace, to the pure air and
sunlight to which man must once more set his face. Yet He bore with Him in that
wonderful flight the dew of tears and the aroma of earth. He had not spared
words with which to lash and whip the naked human heart, and He did not spare
words to lift up the bleeding, shrinking thing, and comfort it with the divine
vision of love…
Historically
speaking, it was about forty minutes before He turned to the shrouded image
behind the altar.
"Oh!
Maternity!" he cried. "Mother of us all -"
And then, to
those who heard Him, the supreme miracle took place… For it seemed now in an
instant that it was no longer man who spoke, but One who stood upon the stage
of the superhuman. The curtain ripped back, as one who stood by it tore,
panting, at the strings; and there, it seemed, face to face stood the Mother
above the altar, huge, white and protective, and the Child, one passionate
incarnation of love, crying to her from the tribune.
"Oh! Mother of
us all, and Mother of Me!"
So He praised her
to her face, that sublime principle of life, declared her glories and her
strength, her Immaculate Motherhood, her seven swords of anguish driven through
her heart by the passion and the follies of her Son - He promised her great
things, the recognition of her countless children, the love and service of the
unborn, the welcome of those yet quickening within the womb. He named her the
Wisdom of the Most High, that sweetly orders all things, the Gate of Heaven,
House of Ivory, Comforter of the afflicted, Queen of the World; and, to the
delirious eyes of those who looked on her it seemed that the grave face smiled
to hear Him…
A great panting
as of some monstrous life began to fill the air as the mob swayed behind Him,
and the torrential voice poured on. Waves of emotion swept up and down; there
were cries and sobs, the yelping of a man beside himself at last, from
somewhere among the crowded seats, the crash of a bench, and another and
another, and the gangways were full, for He no longer held them passive to
listen; He was rousing them to some supreme act. The tide crawled nearer, and
the faces stared no longer at the Son but the Mother; the girl in the gallery
tore at the heavy railing, and sank down sobbing upon her knees. And above all
the voice pealed on - and the thin hands blanched to whiteness strained from
the wide and sumptuous sleeves as if to reach across the sanctuary itself.
It was a new tale
He was telling now, and all to her glory. He was from the East, now they knew,
come from some triumph. He had been hailed as King, adored as Divine, as was
meet and right - He, the humble superhuman son of a Human Mother - who bore not
a sword but peace, not a cross but a crown. So it seemed He was saying; yet no
man there knew whether He said it or not - whether the voice proclaimed it, or
their hearts asserted it. He was on the steps of the sanctuary now, still with
outstretched hands and pouring words, and the mob rolled after him to the
rumble of ten thousand feet and the sighing of ten thousand hearts… He was at
the altar; He was upon it. Again in one last cry, as the crowd broke against
the steps beneath, He hailed her Queen and Mother.
The end came in a
moment, swift and inevitable. And for an instant, before the girl in the
gallery sank down, blind with tears, she saw the tiny figure poised there at
the knees of the huge image, beneath the expectant hands, silent and transfigured
in the blaze of light. The Mother, it seemed, had found her Son at last.
For an instant
she saw it, the soaring columns, the gilding and the colours, the swaying
heads, the tossing hands. It was a sea that heaved before her, lights went up
and down, the rose window whirled overhead, presences filled the air, heaven
flashed away, and the earth shook it ecstasy. Then in the heavenly light, to
the crash of drums, above the screaming of the women and the battering of feet,
in one thunder-peal of worship ten thousand voices hailed Him Lord and God.
