CHAPTER
II
I
At twenty-three o'clock that night the Syrian
priest went out to watch for the coming of the messenger from Tiberias. Nearly
two hours previously he had heard the cry of the Russian volor that plied from
Damascus to Tiberias, and Tiberias to Jerusalem, and even as it was the messenger
was a little late.
These were very
primitive arrangements, but Palestine was out of the world - a slip of useless
country - and it was necessary for a man to ride from Tiberias to Nazareth each
night with papers from Cardinal Corkran to the Pope, and to return with
correspondence. It was a dangerous task, and the members of the New Order who
surrounded the Cardinal undertook it by turns. In this manner all matters for
which the Pope's personal attention was required, and which were too long and
not too urgent, could be dealt with at leisure by him, and an answer returned
within the twenty-four hours.
It was a
brilliant moonlit night. The great golden shield was riding high above Thabor,
shedding its strange metallic light down the long slopes and over the moor-like
country that rose up from before the house-door - casting too heavy black
shadows that seemed far more concrete and solid than the brilliant pale
surfaces of the rock slabs or even than the diamond flashes from the quartz and
crystal that here and there sparkled up the stony pathway. Compared with this
clear splendour, the yellow light from the shuttered house seemed a hot and
tawdry thing; and the priest, leaning against the door-post, his eyes alone
alight in his dark face, sank down at last with a kind of Eastern sensuousness
to bathe himself in the glory, and to spread his lean, brown hands out to it.
This was a very
simple man, in faith as well as in life. For him there were neither the
ecstasies nor the desolations of his master. It was an immense and solemn joy
to him to live here at the spot of God's Incarnation and in attendance upon His
Vicar. As regarded the movements of the world, he observed them as a man in a
ship watches the heaving of the waves far beneath. Of course the world was
restless, he half perceived, for, as the Latin Doctor had said, all hearts were
restless until they found their rest in God. Quare fremuerunt gentes?… Adversus
Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus! As to the end - he was not greatly
concerned. It might well be that the ship would be overwhelmed, but the moment
of the catastrophe would be the end of all things earthly. The gates of hell
shall not prevail: when Rome falls, the world falls; and when the world falls,
Christ is manifest in power. For himself, he imagined that the end was not far
away. When he had named Megiddo this afternoon it had been in his mind; to him
it seemed natural that at the consummation of all things Christ's Vicar should
dwell at Nazareth where His King had come on earth - and that the Armageddon of
the Divine John should be within sight of the scene where Christ had first
taken His earthly sceptre and should take it again. After all, it would not be
the first battle that Megiddo had seen. Israel and Amalek had met here; Israel
and Assyria; Sesostris had ridden here and Sennacherib. Christian and Turk had
contended here, like Michael and Satan, over the place where God's Body had
lain. As to the exact method of that end, he had no clear views; it would be a
battle of some kind, and what field could be found more evidently designed for
that than this huge flat circular plain of Esdraelon, twenty miles across,
sufficient to hold all the armies of the earth in its embrace? To his view once
more, ignorant as he was of present statistics, the world was divided into two
large sections, Christians and heathens, and he supposed them very much of a
size. Something would happen, troops would land at Khaifa, they would stream
southwards from Tiberias, Damascus and remote Asia, northwards from Jerusalem,
Egypt and Africa; eastwards from Europe; westwards from Asia again and the
far-off Americas. And, surely, the time could not be far away, for here was
Christ's Vicar; and, as He Himself had said in His gospel of the Advent,
Ubicumque fuerit corpus, illie congregabuntur et aquilae. Of more subtle
interpretations of prophecy he had no knowledge. For him words were things, not
merely labels upon ideas. What Christ and St. Paul and St. John had said - these
things were so. He had escaped, owing chiefly to his isolation from the world,
that vast expansion of Ritschlian ideas that during the last century had been
responsible for the desertion by so many of any intelligible creed. For others
this had been the supreme struggle - the difficulty of decision between the
facts that words were not things, and yet that the things they represented were
in themselves objective. But to this man, sitting now in the moonlight,
listening to the far-off tap of hoofs over the hill as the messenger came up
from Cana, faith was as simple as an exact science. Here Gabriel had descended
on wide feathered wings from the Throne of God set beyond the stars, the Holy
Ghost had breathed in a beam of ineffable light, the Word had become Flesh as
Mary folded her arms and bowed her head to the decree of the Eternal. And here
once more, he thought, though it was no more than a guess - yet he thought that
already the running of chariot-wheels was audible—the tumult of the hosts of
God gathering about the camp of the saints - he thought that already beyond the
bars of the dark Gabriel set to his lips the trumpet of doom and heaven was
astir. He might be wrong at this time, as others had been wrong at other times,
but neither he nor they could be wrong for ever; there must some day be an end
to the patience of God, even though that patience sprang from the eternity of
His nature. He stood up, as down the pale moonlit path a hundred yards away
came a pale figure of one who rode, with a leather bag strapped to his girdle.
´
II
It would be about
three o'clock in the morning that the priest awoke in his little mud-walled
room next to that of the Holy Father's, and heard a footstep coming up the
stairs. Last evening he had left his master as usual beginning to open the pile
of letters arrived from Cardinal Corkran, and himself had gone straight to his
bed and slept. He lay now a moment or two, still drowsy, listening to the pad
of feet, and an instant later sat up abruptly, for a deliberate tap had sounded
on the door. Again it came; he sprang out of bed in his long night-tunic, drew
it up hastily in his girdle, went to the door and opened it.
The Pope was
standing there, with a little lamp in one hand, for the dawn had scarcely yet
begun, and a paper in the other.
"I beg your
pardon, Father; but there is a message I must have sent at once to his
Eminence."
Together they
went out through the Pope's room, the priest, still half-blind with sleep,
passed up the stairs, and emerged into the clear cold air of the upper roof.
The Pope blew out His lamp, and set it on the parapet.
"You will be
cold, Father; fetch your cloak."
"And you,
Holiness?"
The other made a
little gesture of denial, and went across to the tiny temporary shed where the
wireless telegraphic instrument stood.
"Fetch your
cloak, Father," He said again over His shoulder. "I will ring up
meanwhile."
When the priest
came back three minutes later, in his slippers and cloak, carrying another
cloak also for his master, the Pope was still seated at the table. He did not
even move His head as the other came up, but once more pressed on the lever
that, communicating with the twelve-foot pole that rose through the pent-house
overhead, shot out the quivering energy through the eighty miles of glimmering
air that lay between Nazareth and Damascus.
This simple
priest had scarcely even by now become accustomed to this extraordinary device
invented a century ago and perfected through all those years to this precise
exactness - that device by which with the help of a stick, a bundle of wires,
and a box of wheels, something, at last established to be at the root of all
matter, if not at the very root of physical life, spoke across the spaces of
the world to a tiny receiver tuned by a hair's breadth to the vibration with
which it was set in relations.
The air was
surprisingly cold, considering the heat that had preceded and would follow it,
and the priest shivered a little as he stood clear of the roof, and stared, now
at the motionless figure in the chair before him, now at the vast vault of the
sky passing, even as he looked, from a cold colourless luminosity to a tender
tint of yellow, as far away beyond Thabor and Moab the dawn began to deepen.
From the village half-a-mile away arose the crowing of a cock, thin and brazen
as a trumpet; a dog barked once and was silent again; and then, on a sudden, a
single stroke upon a bell hung in the roof recalled him in an instant, and told
him that his work was to begin.
The Pope pressed
the lever again at the sound, twice, and then, after a pause, once more - waited
a moment for an answer, and then when it came, rose and signed to the priest to
take his place.
The Syrian sat
down, handing the extra cloak to his master, and waited until the other had
settled Himself in a chair set in such a position at the side of the table that
the face of each was visible to the other. Then he waited, with his brown
fingers poised above the row of keys, looking at the other's face as He
arranged himself to speak. That face, he thought, looking out from the hood,
seemed paler than ever in this cold light of dawn; the black arched eyebrows
accentuated this, and even the steady lips, preparing to speak, seemed white
and bloodless. He had His paper in His hand, and His eyes were fixed upon this.
"Make sure
it is the Cardinal," he said abruptly.
The priest tapped
off an enquiry, and, with moving lips, raid off the printed message, as like
magic it precipitated itself on to the tall white sheet of paper that faced
him.
"It is his
Eminence, Holiness," he said softly. "He is alone at the
instrument."
"Very well.
Now then; begin."
"We have
received your Eminence's letter, and have noted the news… It should have been
forwarded by telegraphy - why was that not done?"
The voice paused,
and the priest who had snapped off the message, more quickly than a man could
write it, read aloud the answer.
"'I did not
understand that it was urgent. I thought it was but one more assault. I had
intended to communicate more so soon as I heard more."'
"Of course
it was urgent," came the voice again in the deliberate intonation that was
used between these two in the case of messages for transmission. "Remember
that all news of this kind is always urgent."
"'I will
remember,' read the priest. 'I regret my mistake.'"
"You tell
us," went on the Pope, His eyes still downcast on the paper, "that
this measure is decided upon; you name only three authorities. Give me, now,
all the authorities you have, if you have more."
There was a
moment's pause. Then the priest began to read off the names.
"Besides the
three Cardinals whose names I sent, the Archbishops of Thibet, Cairo, Calcutta
and Sydney have all asked if the news was true, and for directions if it is
true; besides others whose names I can communicate if I may leave the table for
a moment.'"
"Do so,"
said the Pope.
Again there was a
pause. Then once more the names began.
"'The
Bishops of Bukarest, the Marquesas Islands and Newfoundland. The Franciscans in
Japan, the Crutched Friars in Morocco, the Archbishops of Manitoba and
Portland, and the Cardinal-Archbisbop of Pekin. I have despatched two members
of Christ Crucified to England.'"
"Tell us
when the news first arrived, and how."
"'I was
called up to the instrument yesterday evening at about twenty o'clock. The
Archbishop of Sydney was asking, through our station at Bombay, whether the
news was true. I replied I had heard nothing of it. Within ten minutes four
more inquiries had come to the same effect; and three minutes later Cardinal
Ruspoli sent the positive news from Turin. This was accompanied by a similar
message from Father Petrovski in Moscow. Then - '"
"Stop. Why
did not Cardinal Dolgorovski communicate it?"
"'He did
communicate it three hours later.'"
"Why not at
once?"
"'His
Eminence had not heard it.'"
"Find out at
what hour the news reached Moscow - not now, but within the day."
"'I
will.'"
"Go on,
then."
"'Cardinal
Malpas communicated it within five minutes of Cardinal Ruspoli, and the rest of
the inquiries arrived before midnight. China reported it at
twenty-three.'"
"Then when
do you suppose the news was made public?"
"'It was
decided first at the secret London conference, yesterday, at about sixteen
o'clock by our time. The Plenipotentiaries appear to have signed it at that
hour. After that it was communicated to the world. It was published here half
an hour past midnight.'"
"Then
Felsenburgh was in London?"
"'I am not
yet sure. Cardinal Malpas tells me that Felsenburgh gave his provisional
consent on the previous day.'"
"Very good.
That is all you know, then?"
"'I was
called up an hour ago by Cardinal Ruspoli again. He tells me that he fears a
riot in Florence; it will be the first of many revolutions, he says.'"
"Does he ask
for anything?"
"'Only for
directions.'"
"Tell him
that we send him the Apostolic Benediction, and will forward directions within
the course of two hours. Select twelve members of the Order for immediate
service."
"'I
will.'"
"Communicate
that message also, as soon as we have finished, to all the Sacred College, and
bid them communicate it with all discretion to all metropolitans and bishops,
that priests and people may know that We bear them in our heart."
"'I will,
Holiness.'"
"Tell them,
finally, that We had foreseen this long ago; that We commend them to the
Eternal Father without Whose Providence no sparrow falls to the ground. Bid
them be quiet and confident; to do nothing, save confess their faith when they
are questioned. All other directions shall be issued to their pastors
immediately!"
"'I will,
Holiness.'"
* * * * *
There was again a pause.
The Pope had been
speaking with the utmost tranquillity as one in a dream. His eyes were downcast
upon the paper, His whole body as motionless as an image. Yet to the priest who
listened, despatching the Latin messages, and reading aloud the replies, it
seemed, although so little intelligible news had reached him, as if something
very strange and great was impending. There was the sense of a peculiar strain
in the air, and although he drew no deductions from the fact that apparently the
whole Catholic world was in frantic communication with Damascus, yet he
remembered his meditations of the evening before as he had waited for the
messenger. It seemed as if the powers of this world were contemplating one more
step - with its nature he was not greatly concerned.
The Pope spoke
again in His natural voice.
"Father,"
he said, "what I am about to say now is as if I told it in confession. You
understand? - Very well. Now begin."
Then again the
intonation began.
"Eminence.
We shall say mass of the Holy Ghost in one hour from now. At the end of that
time, you will cause that all the Sacred College shall be in touch with
yourself, and waiting for our commands. This new decision is unlike any that
have preceded it. Surely you understand that now. Two or three plans are in our
mind, yet We are not sure yet which it is that our Lord intends. After mass We
shall communicate to you that which He shall show Us to be according to His
Will. We beg of you to say mass also, immediately, for Our intention. Whatever
must be done must be done quickly. The matter of Cardinal Dolgorovski you may
leave until later. But we wish to hear the result of your inquiries, especially
in London, before mid-day. Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius et
Spiritus Sanctus."
"'Amen!'"
murmured the priest, reading it from the sheet.
III
The little chapel
in the house below was scarcely more dignified than the other rooms. Of
ornaments, except those absolutely essential to liturgy and devotion, there
were none. In the plaster of the walls were indented in slight relief the
fourteen stations of the Cross; a small stone image of the Mother of God stood
in a corner, with an iron-work candlestick before it, and on the solid uncarved
stone altar, raised on a stone step, stood six more iron candlesticks and an
iron crucifix. A tabernacle, also of iron, shrouded by linen curtains, stood
beneath the cross; a small stone slab projecting from the wall served as a
credence. There was but one window, and this looked into the court, so that the
eyes of strangers might not penetrate.
It seemed to the
Syrian priest as he went about his business - laying out the vestments in the
little sacristy that opened out at one side of the altar, preparing the cruets
and stripping the covering from the altar-cloth - that even that slight work
was wearying. There seemed a certain oppression in the air. As to how far that
was the result of his broken rest he did not know, but he feared that it was
one more of those scirocco days that threatened. That yellowish tinge of dawn
had not passed with the sun-rising; even now, as he went noiselessly on his
bare feet between the predella and the prie-dieu where the silent white figure
was still motionless, he caught now and again, above the roof across the tiny
court, a glimpse of that faint sand-tinged sky that was the promise of beat and
heaviness.
He finished at
last, lighted the candles, genuflected, and stood with bowed head waiting for
the Holy Father to rise from His knees. A servant's footstep sounded in the
court, coming across to hear mass, and simultaneously the Pope rose and went
towards the sacristy, where the red vestments of God who came by fire were laid
ready for the Sacrifice.
* * * * *
Silvester's bearing at mass was singularly
unostentatious. He moved as swiftly as any young priest, His voice was quite
even and quite low, and his pace neither rapid nor pompous. According to
tradition, He occupied half-an-hour ab amictu ad amictum; and even in the tiny
empty chapel He observed to keep His eyes always downcast. And yet this Syrian
never served His mass without a thrill of something resembling fear; it was not
only his knowledge of the awful dignity of this simple celebrant; but, although
he could not have expressed it so, there was an aroma of an emotion about the
vestmented figure that affected him almost physically - an entire absence of
self-consciousness, and in its place the consciousness of some other Presence,
a perfection of manner even in the smallest details that could only arise from
absolute recollection. Even in Rome in the old days it had been one of the
sights of Rome to see Father Franklin say mass; seminary students on the eve of
ordination were sent to that sight to learn the perfect manner and method.
To-day all was as
usual, but at the Communion the priest looked up suddenly at the moment when
the Host had been consumed, with a half impression that either a sound or a
gesture had invited it; and, as he looked, his heart began to beat thick and
convulsive at the base of his throat. Yet to the outward eyes there was nothing
unusual. The figure stood there with bowed head, the chin resting on the tips
of the long fingers, the body absolutely upright, and standing with that
curious light poise as if no weight rested upon the feet. But to the inner
sense something was apparent the Syrian could not in the least formulate it to
himself; but afterwards he reflected that he had stared expecting some visible
or audible manifestation to take place. It was an impression that might be
described under the terms of either light or sound; at any instant that
delicate vivid force, that to the eyes of the soul burned beneath the red
chasuble and the white alb, might have suddenly welled outwards under the
appearance of a gush of radiant light rendering luminous not only the clear
brown flesh seen beneath the white hair, but the very texture of the coarse,
dead, stained stuffs that swathed the rest of the body. Or it might have shown
itself in the strain of a long chord on strings or wind, as if the mystical
union of the dedicated soul with the ineffable Godhead and Humanity of Jesus
Christ generated such a sound as ceaselessly flows out with the river of life
from beneath the Throne of the Lamb. Or yet once more it might have declared
itself under the guise of a perfume - the very essence of distilled sweetness -
such a scent as that which, streaming out through the gross tabernacle of a
saint's body, is to those who observe it as the breath of heavenly roses…
The moments
passed in that hush of purity and peace; sounds came and went outside, the
rattle of a cart far away, the sawing of the first cicada in the coarse grass
twenty yards away beyond the wall; some one behind the priest was breathing
short and thick as under the pressure of an intolerable emotion, and yet the
figure stood there still, without a movement or sway to break the carved
motionlessness of the alb-folds or the perfect poise of the white-shod feet.
When He moved at last to uncover the Precious Blood, to lay His hands on the
altar and adore, it was as if a statue had stirred into life; to the server it
was very nearly as a shock.
Again, when the
chalice was empty, that first impression reasserted itself; the human and the
external died in the embrace of the Divine and Invisible, and once more silence
lived and glowed… And again as the spiritual energy sank back again into its
origin, Silvester stretched out the chalice.
With knees that
shook and eyes wide in expectation, the priest rose, adored, and went to the
credence.
* * * * *
It was customary after the Pope's mass that the
priest himself should offer the Sacrifice in his presence, but to-day so soon
as the vestments had been laid one by one on the rough chest, Silvester turned
to the priest.
"Presently,"
he said softly. "Go up, father, at once to the roof, and tell the Cardinal
to be ready. I shall come in five minutes."
It was surely a
scirocco-day, thought the priest, as he came up on to the flat roof. Overhead,
instead of the clear blue proper to that hour of the morning, lay a pale yellow
sky darkening even to brown at the horizon. Thabor, before him, hung distant
and sombre seen through the impalpable atmosphere of sand, and across the
plain, as he glanced behind him, beyond the white streak of Nain nothing was
visible except the pale outline of the tops of the hills against the sky. Even
at this morning hour, too, the air was hot and breathless, broken only by the
slow-stifling lift of the south-western breeze that, blowing across countless
miles of sand beyond far-away Egypt, gathered up the heat of the huge waterless
continent and was pouring it, with scarcely a streak of sea to soften its
malignity, on this poor strip of land. Carmel, too, as he turned again, was
swathed about its base with mist, half dry and half damp, and above showed its
long bull-head running out defiantly against the western sky. The very table as
he touched it was dry and hot to the hand, by mid-day the steel would be
intolerable.
He pressed the
lever, and waited; pressed it again, and waited again. There came the answering
ring, and he tapped across the eighty miles of air that his Eminence's presence
was required at once. A minute or two passed, and then, after another rap of
the bell, a line flicked out on the new white sheet.
"'I am here.
Is it his Holiness?'"
He felt a hand
upon his shoulder, and turned to see Silvester, hooded and in white, behind his
chair.
"Tell him
yes. Ask him if there is further news."
The Pope went to
the chair once more and sat down, and a minute later the priest, with growing
excitement, read out the answer.
"'Inquiries
are pouring in. Many expect your Holiness to issue a challenge. My secretaries
have been occupied since four o'clock. The anxiety is indescribable. Some are
denying that they have a Pope. Something must be done at once.'"
"Is that
all?" asked the Pope.
Again the priest
read out the answer. "'Yes and no. The news is true. It will be inforced
immediately. Unless a step is taken immediately there will be widespread and
final apostasy.'"
"Very
good," murmured the Pope, in his official voice. "Now listen
carefully, Eminence." He was silent for a moment, his fingers joined
beneath his chin as just now at mass. Then he spoke.
"We are
about to place ourselves unreservedly in the hands of God. Human prudence must
no longer restrain us. We command you then, using all discretion that is
possible, to communicate these wishes of ours to the following persons under
the strictest secrecy, and to no others whatsoever. And for this service you
are to employ messengers, taken from the Order of Christ Crucified, two for
each message, which is not to be committed to writing in any form. The members
of the Sacred College, numbering twelve; the metropolitans and Patriarchs
through the entire world, numbering twenty-two; the Generals of the Religious
Orders: the Society of Jesus, the Friars, the Monks Ordinary, and the Monks
Contemplative four. These persons, thirty-eight in number, with the chaplain of
your Eminence, who shall act as notary, and my own who shall assist him, and
Ourself - forty-one all told - these persons are to present themselves here at
our palace of Nazareth not later than the Eve of Pentecost. We feel Ourselves
unwilling to decide the steps necessary to be taken with reference to the new
decree, except we first hear the counsel of our advisers, and give them an
opportunity of communicating freely one with another. These words, as we have
spoken them, are to be forwarded to all those persons whom we have named; and
your Eminence will further inform them that our deliberations will not occupy
more than four days.
"As regards
the questions of provisioning the council and all matters of that kind, your
Eminence will despatch to-day the chaplain of whom we have spoken, who with my
own chaplain will at once set about preparations, and your Eminence will
yourself follow, appointing Father Marabout to act in your absence, not later
than four days hence.
"Finally, to
all who have asked explicit directions in the face of this new decree, communicate
this one sentence, and no more.
"Lose not
your confidence which hath a great reward. For yet a little while, and, He that
is to come will come and will not delay. - Silvester the Bishop, Servant of the
Servants of God."
