CHAPTER I

LORD OF THE WORLD

BY ROBERT HUGH BENSON

Dedication

CLAVI DOMUS DAVID

PREFACE

I am perfectly aware that this is a terribly sensational book, and open

to innumerable criticisms on that account, as well as on many others.

But I did not know how else to express the principles I desired (and

which I passionately believe to be true) except by producing their lines

to a sensational point. I have tried, however, not to scream unduly

loud, and to retain, so far as possible, reverence and consideration for

the opinions of other people. Whether I have succeeded in that attempt

is quite another matter.

Robert Hugh Benson.

CAMBRIDGE 1907.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

BOOK I

THE ADVENT

BOOK II

THE ENCOUNTER

BOOK III

THE VICTORY

Persons who do not like tiresome prologues, need not read this one. It

is essential only to the situation, not to the story.

PROLOGUE

“You must give me a moment,” said the old man, leaning back.

Percy resettled himself in his chair and waited, chin on hand.

It was a very silent room in which the three men sat, furnished with the

extreme common sense of the period. It had neither window nor door; for

it was now sixty years since the world, recognising that space is not

confined to the surface of the globe, had begun to burrow in earnest.

Old Mr. Templeton’s house stood some forty feet below the level of the

Thames embankment, in what was considered a somewhat commodious

position, for he had only a hundred yards to walk before he reached the

station of the Second Central Motor-circle, and a quarter of a mile to

the volor-station at Blackfriars. He was over ninety years old, however,

and seldom left his house now. The room itself was lined throughout with

the delicate green jade-enamel prescribed by the Board of Health, and

was suffused with the artificial sunlight discovered by the great Reuter

forty years before; it had the colour-tone of a spring wood, and was

warmed and ventilated through the classical frieze grating to the exact

temperature of 18 degrees Centigrade. Mr. Templeton was a plain man,

content to live as his father had lived before him. The furniture, too,

was a little old-fashioned in make and design, constructed however

according to the prevailing system of soft asbestos enamel welded over

iron, indestructible, pleasant to the touch, and resembling mahogany. A

couple of book-cases well filled ran on either side of the bronze

pedestal electric fire before which sat the three men; and in the

further corners stood the hydraulic lifts that gave entrance, the one to

the bedroom, the other to the corridor fifty feet up which opened on to

the Embankment.

Father Percy Franklin, the elder of the two priests, was rather a

remarkable-looking man, not more than thirty-five years old, but with

hair that was white throughout; his grey eyes, under black eyebrows,

were peculiarly bright and almost passionate; but his prominent nose and

chin and the extreme decisiveness of his mouth reassured the observer as

to his will. Strangers usually looked twice at him.

Father Francis, however, sitting in his upright chair on the other side

of the hearth, brought down the average; for, though his brown eyes were

pleasant and pathetic, there was no strength in his face; there was even

a tendency to feminine melancholy in the corners of his mouth and the

marked droop of his eyelids.

Mr. Templeton was just a very old man, with a strong face in folds,

clean-shaven like the rest of the world, and was now lying back on his

water-pillows with the quilt over his feet.

* * * * *

At last he spoke, glancing first at Percy, on his left.

“Well,” he said, “it is a great business to remember exactly; but this

is how I put it to myself.”

“In England our party was first seriously alarmed at the Labour

Parliament of 1917. That showed us how deeply Herveism had impregnated

the whole social atmosphere. There had been Socialists before, but none

like Gustave Herve in his old age--at least no one of the same power.

He, perhaps you have read, taught absolute Materialism and Socialism

developed to their logical issues. Patriotism, he said, was a relic of

barbarism; and sensual enjoyment was the only certain good. Of course,

every one laughed at him. It was said that without religion there could

be no adequate motive among the masses for even the simplest social

order. But he was right, it seemed. After the fall of the French Church

at the beginning of the century and the massacres of 1914, the

bourgeoisie settled down to organise itself; and that extraordinary

movement began in earnest, pushed through by the middle classes, with no

patriotism, no class distinctions, practically no army. Of course,

Freemasonry directed it all. This spread to Germany, where the influence

of Karl Marx had already---”

“Yes, sir,” put in Percy smoothly, “but what of England, if you don’t

mind---”

“Ah, yes; England. Well, in 1917 the Labour party gathered up the reins,

and Communism really began. That was long before I can remember, of

course, but my father used to date it from then. The only wonder was

that things did not go forward more quickly; but I suppose there was a

good deal of Tory leaven left. Besides, centuries generally run slower

than is expected, especially after beginning with an impulse. But the

new order began then; and the Communists have never suffered a serious

reverse since, except the little one in ’25. Blenkin founded ‘The New

People’ then; and the ‘Times’ dropped out; but it was not, strangely

enough, till ’35 that the House of Lords fell for the last time. The

Established Church had gone finally in ’29.”

“And the religious effect of that?” asked Percy swiftly, as the old man

paused to cough slightly, lifting his inhaler. The priest was anxious to

keep to the point.

“It was an effect itself,” said the other, “rather than a cause. You

see, the Ritualists, as they used to call them, after a desperate

attempt to get into the Labour swim, came into the Church after the

Convocation of ’19, when the Nicene Creed dropped out; and there was no

real enthusiasm except among them. But so far as there was an effect

from the final Disestablishment, I think it was that what was left of

the State Church melted into the Free Church, and the Free Church was,

after all, nothing more than a little sentiment. The Bible was

completely given up as an authority after the renewed German attacks in

the twenties; and the Divinity of our Lord, some think, had gone all but

in name by the beginning of the century. The Kenotic theory had provided

for that. Then there was that strange little movement among the Free

Churchmen even earlier; when ministers who did no more than follow the

swim--who were sensitive to draughts, so to speak--broke off from their

old positions. It is curious to read in the history of the time how they

were hailed as independent thinkers. It was just exactly what they were

not.... Where was I? Oh, yes.... Well, that cleared the ground for us,

and the Church made extraordinary progress for a while--extraordinary,

that is, under the circumstances, because you must remember, things were

very different from twenty, or even ten, years before. I mean that,

roughly speaking, the severing of the sheep and the goats had begun. The

religious people were practically all Catholics and Individualists; the

irreligious people rejected the supernatural altogether, and were, to a

man, Materialists and Communists. But we made progress because we had a

few exceptional men--Delaney the philosopher, McArthur and Largent, the

philanthropists, and so on. It really seemed as if Delaney and his

disciples might carry everything before them. You remember his

‘Analogy’? Oh, yes, it is all in the text-books....

“Well, then, at the close of the Vatican Council, which had been called

in the nineteenth century, and never dissolved, we lost a great number

through the final definitions. The ‘Exodus of the Intellectuals’ the

world called it---”

“The Biblical decisions,” put in the younger priest.

“That partly; and the whole conflict that began with the rise of

Modernism at the beginning of the century but much more the condemnation

of Delaney, and of the New Transcendentalism generally, as it was then

understood. He died outside the Church, you know. Then there was the

condemnation of Sciotti’s book on Comparative Religion.... After that

the Communists went on by strides, although by very slow ones. It seems

extraordinary to you, I dare say, but you cannot imagine the excitement

when the _Necessary Trades Bill_ became law in ’60. People thought that

all enterprise would stop when so many professions were nationalised;

but, you know, it didn’t. Certainly the nation was behind it.”

“What year was the _Two-Thirds Majority Bill_ passed?” asked Percy.

“Oh! long before--within a year or two of the fall of the House of

Lords. It was necessary, I think, or the Individualists would have gone

raving mad.... Well, the _Necessary Trades Bill_ was inevitable: people

had begun to see that even so far back as the time when the railways

were municipalised. For a while there was a burst of art; because all

the Individualists who could went in for it (it was then that the Toller

school was founded); but they soon drifted back into Government

employment; after all, the six-per-cent limit for all individual

enterprise was not much of a temptation; and Government paid well.”

Percy shook his head.

“Yes; but I cannot understand the present state of affairs. You said

just now that things went slowly?”

“Yes,” said the old man, “but you must remember the Poor Laws. That

established the Communists for ever. Certainly Braithwaite knew his

business.”

The younger priest looked up inquiringly.

“The abolition of the old workhouse system,” said Mr. Templeton. “It is

all ancient history to you, of course; but I remember as if it was

yesterday. It was that which brought down what was still called the

Monarchy and the Universities.”

“Ah,” said Percy. “I should like to hear you talk about that, sir.”

“Presently, father.... Well, this is what Braithwaite did. By the old

system all paupers were treated alike, and resented it. By the new

system there were the three grades that we have now, and the

enfranchisement of the two higher grades. Only the absolutely worthless

were assigned to the third grade, and treated more or less as

criminals--of course after careful examination. Then there was the

reorganisation of the Old Age Pensions. Well, don’t you see how strong

that made the Communists? The Individualists--they were still called

Tories when I was a boy--the Individualists have had no chance since.

They are no more than a worn-out drag now. The whole of the working

classes--and that meant ninety-nine of a hundred--were all against

them.”

Percy looked up; but the other went on.

“Then there was the Prison Reform Bill under Macpherson, and the

abolition of capital punishment; there was the final Education Act of

’59, whereby dogmatic secularism was established; the practical

abolition of inheritance under the reformation of the Death Duties---”

“I forget what the old system was,” said Percy.

“Why, it seems incredible, but the old system was that all paid alike.

First came the Heirloom Act, and then the change by which inherited

wealth paid three times the duty of earned wealth, leading up to the

acceptance of Karl Marx’s doctrines in ’89--but the former came in

’77.... Well, all these things kept England up to the level of the

Continent; she had only been just in time to join in with the final

scheme of Western Free Trade. That was the first effect, you remember,

of the Socialists’ victory in Germany.”

“And how did we keep out of the Eastern War?” asked Percy anxiously.

“Oh! that’s a long story; but, in a word, America stopped us; so we lost

India and Australia. I think that was the nearest to the downfall of the

Communists since ’25. But Braithwaite got out of it very cleverly by

getting us the protectorate of South Africa once and for all. He was an

old man then, too.”

Mr. Templeton stopped to cough again. Father Francis sighed and shifted

in his chair.

“And America?” asked Percy.

“Ah! all that is very complicated. But she knew her strength and annexed

Canada the same year. That was when we were at our weakest.”

Percy stood up.

“Have you a Comparative Atlas, sir?” he asked.

The old man pointed to a shelf.

“There,” he said.

* * * * *

Percy looked at the sheets a minute or two in silence, spreading them on

his knees.

“It is all much simpler, certainly,” he murmured, glancing first at the

old complicated colouring of the beginning of the twentieth century, and

then at the three great washes of the twenty-first.

He moved his finger along Asia. The words EASTERN EMPIRE ran across the

pale yellow, from the Ural Mountains on the left to the Behring Straits

on the right, curling round in giant letters through India, Australia,

and New Zealand. He glanced at the red; it was considerably smaller, but

still important enough, considering that it covered not only Europe

proper, but all Russia up to the Ural Mountains, and Africa to the

south. The blue-labelled AMERICAN REPUBLIC swept over the whole of that

continent, and disappeared right round to the left of the Western

Hemisphere in a shower of blue sparks on the white sea.

“Yes, it’s simpler,” said the old man drily.

Percy shut the book and set it by his chair.

“And what next, sir? What will happen?”

The old Tory statesman smiled.

“God knows,” he said. “If the Eastern Empire chooses to move, we can do

nothing. I don’t know why they have not moved. I suppose it is because

of religious differences.”

“Europe will not split?” asked the priest.

“No, no. We know our danger now. And America would certainly help us.

But, all the same, God help us--or you, I should rather say--if the

Empire does move! She knows her strength at last.”

There was silence for a moment or two. A faint vibration trembled

through the deep-sunk room as some huge machine went past on the broad

boulevard overhead.

“Prophesy, sir,” said Percy suddenly. “I mean about religion.”

Mr. Templeton inhaled another long breath from his instrument. Then

again he took up his discourse.

“Briefly,” he said, “there are three forces--Catholicism,

Humanitarianism, and the Eastern religions. About the third I cannot

prophesy, though I think the Sufis will be victorious. Anything may

happen; Esotericism is making enormous strides--and that means

Pantheism; and the blending of the Chinese and Japanese dynasties throws

out all our calculations. But in Europe and America, there is no doubt

that the struggle lies between the other two. We can neglect everything

else. And, I think, if you wish me to say what I think, that, humanly

speaking, Catholicism will decrease rapidly now. It is perfectly true

that Protestantism is dead. Men do recognise at last that a supernatural

Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in

matters of faith is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration.

And it is also true that since the Catholic Church is the only

institution that even claims supernatural authority, with all its

merciless logic, she has again the allegiance of practically all

Christians who have any supernatural belief left. There are a few

faddists left, especially in America and here; but they are negligible.

That is all very well; but, on the other hand, you must remember that

Humanitarianism, contrary to all persons’ expectations, is becoming an

actual religion itself, though anti-supernatural. It is Pantheism; it is

developing a ritual under Freemasonry; it has a creed, ‘God is Man,’ and

the rest. It has therefore a real food of a sort to offer to religious

cravings; it idealises, and yet it makes no demand upon the spiritual

faculties. Then, they have the use of all the churches except ours, and

all the Cathedrals; and they are beginning at last to encourage

sentiment. Then, they may display their symbols and we may not: I think

that they will be established legally in another ten years at the

latest.

“Now, we Catholics, remember, are losing; we have lost steadily for more

than fifty years. I suppose that we have, nominally, about one-fortieth

of America now--and that is the result of the Catholic movement of the

early twenties. In France and Spain we are nowhere; in Germany we are

less. We hold our position in the East, certainly; but even there we

have not more than one in two hundred--so the statistics say--and we are

scattered. In Italy? Well, we have Rome again to ourselves, but nothing

else; here, we have Ireland altogether and perhaps one in sixty of

England, Wales and Scotland; but we had one in forty seventy years ago.

Then there is the enormous progress of psychology--all clean against us

for at least a century. First, you see, there was Materialism, pure and

simple that failed more or less--it was too crude--until psychology came

to the rescue. Now psychology claims all the rest of the ground; and the

supernatural sense seems accounted for. That’s the claim. No, father, we

are losing; and we shall go on losing, and I think we must even be ready

for a catastrophe at any moment.”

“But---” began Percy.

“You think that weak for an old man on the edge of the grave. Well, it

is what I think. I see no hope. In fact, it seems to me that even now

something may come on us quickly. No; I see no hope until---”

Percy looked up sharply.

“Until our Lord comes back,” said the old statesman.

Father Francis sighed once more, and there fell a silence.

* * * * *

“And the fall of the Universities?” said Percy at last.

“My dear father, it was exactly like the fall of the Monasteries under

Henry VIII--the same results, the same arguments, the same incidents.

They were the strongholds of Individualism, as the Monasteries were the

strongholds of Papalism; and they were regarded with the same kind of

awe and envy. Then the usual sort of remarks began about the amount of

port wine drunk; and suddenly people said that they had done their work,

that the inmates were mistaking means for ends; and there was a great

deal more reason for saying it. After all, granted the supernatural,

Religious Houses are an obvious consequence; but the object of secular

education is presumably the production of something visible--either

character or competence; and it became quite impossible to prove that

the Universities produced either--which was worth having. The

distinction between ου and με is not an end in itself;

and the kind of person produced by its study was not one which appealed

to England in the twentieth century. I am not sure that it appealed even

to me much (and I was always a strong Individualist)--except by way of

pathos---”

“Yes?” said Percy.

“Oh, it was pathetic enough. The Science Schools of Cambridge and the

Colonial Department of Oxford were the last hope; and then those went.

The old dons crept about with their books, but nobody wanted them--they

were too purely theoretical; some drifted into the poorhouses, first or

second grade; some were taken care of by charitable clergymen; there was

that attempt to concentrate in Dublin; but it failed, and people soon

forgot them. The buildings, as you know, were used for all kinds of

things. Oxford became an engineering establishment for a while, and

Cambridge a kind of Government laboratory. I was at King’s College, you

know. Of course it was all as horrible as it could be--though I am glad

they kept the chapel open even as a museum. It was not nice to see the

chantries filled with anatomical specimens. However, I don’t think it

was much worse than keeping stoves and surplices in them.”

“What happened to you?”

“Oh! I was in Parliament very soon; and I had a little money of my own,

too. But it was very hard on some of them; they had little pensions, at

least all who were past work. And yet, I don’t know: I suppose it had

to come. They were very little more than picturesque survivals, you

know; and had not even the grace of a religious faith about them.”

Percy sighed again, looking at the humorously reminiscent face of the

old man. Then he suddenly changed the subject again.

“What about this European parliament?” he said.

The old man started.

“Oh!... I think it will pass,” he said, “if a man can be found to push

it. All this last century has been leading up to it, as you see.

Patriotism has been dying fast; but it ought to have died, like slavery

and so forth, under the influence of the Catholic Church. As it is, the

work has been done without the Church; and the result is that the world

is beginning to range itself against us: it is an organised antagonism--

a kind of Catholic anti-Church. Democracy has done what the Divine

Monarchy should have done. If the proposal passes I think we may expect

something like persecution once more.... But, again, the Eastern

invasion may save us, if it comes off.... I do not know....”

Percy sat still yet a moment; then he stood up suddenly.

“I must go, sir,” he said, relapsing into Esperanto. “It is past

nineteen o’clock. Thank you so much. Are you coming, father?”

Father Francis stood up also, in the dark grey suit permitted to

priests, and took up his hat.

“Well, father,” said the old man again, “come again some day, if I

haven’t been too discursive. I suppose you have to write your letter

yet?”

Percy nodded.

“I did half of it this morning,” he said, “but I felt I wanted another

bird’s-eye view before I could understand properly: I am so grateful to

you for giving it me. It is really a great labour, this daily letter to

the Cardinal-Protector. I am thinking of resigning if I am allowed.”

“My dear father, don’t do that. If I may say so to your face, I think

you have a very shrewd mind; and unless Rome has balanced information

she can do nothing. I don’t suppose your colleagues are as careful as

yourself.”

Percy smiled, lifting his dark eyebrows deprecatingly.

“Come, father,” he said.

* * * * *

The two priests parted at the steps of the corridor, and Percy stood for

a minute or two staring out at the familiar autumn scene, trying to

understand what it all meant. What he had heard downstairs seemed

strangely to illuminate that vision of splendid prosperity that lay

before him.

The air was as bright as day; artificial sunlight had carried all before

it, and London now knew no difference between dark and light. He stood

in a kind of glazed cloister, heavily floored with a preparation of

rubber on which footsteps made no sound. Beneath him, at the foot of the

stairs, poured an endless double line of persons severed by a partition,

going to right and left, noiselessly, except for the murmur of Esperanto

talking that sounded ceaselessly as they went. Through the clear,

hardened glass of the public passage showed a broad sleek black roadway,

ribbed from side to side, and puckered in the centre, significantly

empty, but even as he stood there a note sounded far away from Old

Westminster, like the hum of a giant hive, rising as it came, and an

instant later a transparent thing shot past, flashing from every angle,

and the note died to a hum again and a silence as the great Government

motor from the south whirled eastwards with the mails. This was a

privileged roadway; nothing but state-vehicles were allowed to use it,

and those at a speed not exceeding one hundred miles an hour.

Other noises were subdued in this city of rubber; the passenger-circles

were a hundred yards away, and the subterranean traffic lay too deep for

anything but a vibration to make itself felt. It was to remove this

vibration, and silence the hum of the ordinary vehicles, that the

Government experts had been working for the last twenty years.

Once again before he moved there came a long cry from overhead,

startlingly beautiful and piercing, and, as he lifted his eyes from the

glimpse of the steady river which alone had refused to be transformed,

he saw high above him against the heavy illuminated clouds, a long

slender object, glowing with soft light, slide northwards and vanish on

outstretched wings. That musical cry, he told himself, was the voice of

one of the European line of volors announcing its arrival in the capital

of Great Britain.

“Until our Lord comes back,” he thought to himself; and for an instant

the old misery stabbed at his heart. How difficult it was to hold the

eyes focussed on that far horizon when this world lay in the foreground

so compelling in its splendour and its strength! Oh, he had argued with

Father Francis an hour ago that size was not the same as greatness, and

that an insistent external could not exclude a subtle internal; and he

had believed what he had then said; but the doubt yet remained till he

silenced it by a fierce effort, crying in his heart to the Poor Man of

Nazareth to keep his heart as the heart of a little child.

Then he set his lips, wondering how long Father Francis would bear the

pressure, and went down the steps.

BOOK I-THE ADVENT

CHAPTER I

I

Oliver Brand, the new member for Croydon (4), sat in his study, looking

out of the window over the top of his typewriter.

His house stood facing northwards at the extreme end of a spur of the

Surrey Hills, now cut and tunnelled out of all recognition; only to a

Communist the view was an inspiriting one. Immediately below the wide

windows the embanked ground fell away rapidly for perhaps a hundred

feet, ending in a high wall, and beyond that the world and works of men

were triumphant as far as eye could see. Two vast tracks like streaked

race-courses, each not less than a quarter of a mile in width, and sunk

twenty feet below the surface of the ground, swept up to a meeting a

mile ahead at the huge junction. Of those, that on his left was the

First Trunk road to Brighton, inscribed in capital letters in the

Railroad Guide, that to the right the Second Trunk to the Tunbridge and

Hastings district. Each was divided length-ways by a cement wall, on one

side of which, on steel rails, ran the electric trams, and on the other

lay the motor-track itself again divided into three, on which ran, first

the Government coaches at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an

hour, second the private motors at not more than sixty, third the cheap

Government line at thirty, with stations every five miles. This was

further bordered by a road confined to pedestrians, cyclists and

ordinary cars on which no vehicle was allowed to move at more than

twelve miles an hour.

Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house-roofs, with

short towers here and there marking public buildings, from the Caterham

district on the left to Croydon in front, all clear and bright in

smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the low

suburban hills against the April sky.

There was surprisingly little sound, considering the pressure of the

population; and, with the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a

train fled north or south, and the occasional sweet chord of the great

motors as they neared or left the junction, there was little to be heard

in this study except a smooth, soothing murmur that filled the air like

the murmur of bees in a garden.

Oliver loved every hint of human life--all busy sights and sounds--and

was listening now, smiling faintly to himself as he stared out into the

clear air. Then he set his lips, laid his fingers on the keys once more,

and went on speech-constructing.

* * * * *

He was very fortunate in the situation of his house. It stood in an

angle of one of those huge spider-webs with which the country was

covered, and for his purposes was all that he could expect. It was close

enough to London to be extremely cheap, for all wealthy persons had

retired at least a hundred miles from the throbbing heart of England;

and yet it was as quiet as he could wish. He was within ten minutes of

Westminster on the one side, and twenty minutes of the sea on the other,

and his constituency lay before him like a raised map. Further, since

the great London termini were but ten minutes away, there were at his

disposal the First Trunk lines to every big town in England. For a

politician of no great means, who was asked to speak at Edinburgh on one

evening and in Marseilles on the next, he was as well placed as any man

in Europe.

He was a pleasant-looking man, not much over thirty years old; black

wire-haired, clean-shaven, thin, virile, magnetic, blue-eyed and

white-skinned; and he appeared this day extremely content with himself

and the world. His lips moved slightly as he worked, his eyes enlarged

and diminished with excitement, and more than once he paused and stared

out again, smiling and flushed.

Then a door opened; a middle-aged man came nervously in with a bundle of

papers, laid them down on the table without a word, and turned to go

out. Oliver lifted his hand for attention, snapped a lever, and spoke.

“Well, Mr. Phillips?” he said.

“There is news from the East, sir,” said the secretary.

Oliver shot a glance sideways, and laid his hand on the bundle.

“Any complete message?” he asked.

“No, sir; it is interrupted again. Mr. Felsenburgh’s name is mentioned.”

Oliver did not seem to hear; he lifted the flimsy printed sheets with a

sudden movement, and began turning them.

“The fourth from the top, Mr. Brand,” said the secretary.

Oliver jerked his head impatiently, and the other went out as if at a

signal.

The fourth sheet from the top, printed in red on green, seemed to absorb

Oliver’s attention altogether, for he read it through two or three

times, leaning back motionless in his chair. Then he sighed, and stared

again through the window.

Then once more the door opened, and a tall girl came in.

“Well, my dear?” she observed.

Oliver shook his head, with compressed lips.

“Nothing definite,” he said. “Even less than usual. Listen.”

He took up the green sheet and began to read aloud as the girl sat down

in a window-seat on his left.

She was a very charming-looking creature, tall and slender, with

serious, ardent grey eyes, firm red lips, and a beautiful carriage of

head and shoulders. She had walked slowly across the room as Oliver took

up the paper, and now sat back in her brown dress in a very graceful and

stately attitude. She seemed to listen with a deliberate kind of

patience; but her eyes flickered with interest.

“‘Irkutsk--April fourteen--Yesterday--as--usual--But--rumoured--

defection--from--Sufi--party--Troops--continue--gathering--

Felsenburgh--addressed--Buddhist--crowd--Attempt--on--Llama--last--

Friday--work--of--Anarchists--Felsenburgh--leaving--for--Moscow--as

--arranged--he....’ There--that is absolutely all,” ended Oliver

dispiritedly. “It’s interrupted as usual.”

The girl began to swing a foot.

“I don’t understand in the least,” she said. “Who is Felsenburgh, after

all?”

“My dear child, that is what all the world is asking. Nothing is known

except that he was included in the American deputation at the last

moment. The _Herald_ published his life last week; but it has been

contradicted. It is certain that he is quite a young man, and that he

has been quite obscure until now.”

“Well, he is not obscure now,” observed the girl.

“I know; it seems as if he were running the whole thing. One never hears

a word of the others. It’s lucky he’s on the right side.”

“And what do you think?”

Oliver turned vacant eyes again out of the window.

“I think it is touch and go,” he said. “The only remarkable thing is

that here hardly anybody seems to realise it. It’s too big for the

imagination, I suppose. There is no doubt that the East has been

preparing for a descent on Europe for these last five years. They have

only been checked by America; and this is one last attempt to stop them.

But why Felsenburgh should come to the front---” he broke off. “He must

be a good linguist, at any rate. This is at least the fifth crowd he has

addressed; perhaps he is just the American interpreter. Christ! I wonder

who he is.”

“Has he any other name?”

“Julian, I believe. One message said so.”

“How did this come through?”

Oliver shook his head.

“Private enterprise,” he said. “The European agencies have stopped work.

Every telegraph station is guarded night and day. There are lines of

volors strung out on every frontier. The Empire means to settle this

business without us.”

“And if it goes wrong?”

“My dear Mabel--if hell breaks loose---” he threw out his hands

deprecatingly.

“And what is the Government doing?”

“Working night and day; so is the rest of Europe. It’ll be Armageddon

with a vengeance if it comes to war.”

“What chance do you see?”

“I see two chances,” said Oliver slowly: “one, that they may be afraid

of America, and may hold their hands from sheer fear; the other that

they may be induced to hold their hands from charity; if only they can

be made to understand that co-operation is the one hope of the world.

But those damned religions of theirs---”

The girl sighed, and looked out again on to the wide plain of

house-roofs below the window.

The situation was indeed as serious as it could be. That huge Empire,

consisting of a federalism of States under the Son of Heaven (made

possible by the merging of the Japanese and Chinese dynasties and the

fall of Russia), had been consolidating its forces and learning its own

power during the last thirty-five years, ever since, in fact, it had

laid its lean yellow hands upon Australia and India. While the rest of

the world had learned the folly of war, ever since the fall of the

Russian republic under the combined attack of the yellow races, the last

had grasped its possibilities. It seemed now as if the civilisation of

the last century was to be swept back once more into chaos. It was not

that the mob of the East cared very greatly; it was their rulers who had

begun to stretch themselves after an almost eternal lethargy, and it was

hard to imagine how they could be checked at this point. There was a

touch of grimness too in the rumour that religious fanaticism was behind

the movement, and that the patient East proposed at last to proselytise

by the modern equivalents of fire and sword those who had laid aside for

the most part all religious beliefs except that in Humanity. To Oliver

it was simply maddening. As he looked from his window and saw that vast

limit of London laid peaceably before him, as his imagination ran out

over Europe and saw everywhere that steady triumph of common sense and

fact over the wild fairy-stories of Christianity, it seemed intolerable

that there should be even a possibility that all this should be swept

back again into the barbarous turmoil of sects and dogmas; for no less

than this would be the result if the East laid hands on Europe. Even

Catholicism would revive, he told himself, that strange faith that had

blazed so often as persecution had been dashed to quench it; and, of all

forms of faith, to Oliver’s mind Catholicism was the most grotesque and

enslaving. And the prospect of all this honestly troubled him, far more

than the thought of the physical catastrophe and bloodshed that would

fall on Europe with the advent of the East. There was but one hope on

the religious side, as he had told Mabel a dozen times, and that was

that the Quietistic Pantheism which for the last century had made such

giant strides in East and West alike, among Mohammedans, Buddhists,

Hindus, Confucianists and the rest, should avail to check the

supernatural frenzy that inspired their exoteric brethren. Pantheism, he

understood, was what he held himself; for him “God” was the developing

sum of created life, and impersonal Unity was the essence of His being;

competition then was the great heresy that set men one against another

and delayed all progress; for, to his mind, progress lay in the merging

of the individual in the family, of the family in the commonwealth, of

the commonwealth in the continent, and of the continent in the world.

Finally, the world itself at any moment was no more than the mood of

impersonal life. It was, in fact, the Catholic idea with the

supernatural left out, a union of earthly fortunes, an abandonment of

individualism on the one side, and of supernaturalism on the other. It

was treason to appeal from God Immanent to God Transcendent; there was

no God transcendent; God, so far as He could be known, was man.

Yet these two, husband and wife after a fashion--for they had entered

into that terminable contract now recognised explicitly by the

State--these two were very far from sharing in the usual heavy dulness

of mere materialists. The world, for them, beat with one ardent life

blossoming in flower and beast and man, a torrent of beautiful vigour

flowing from a deep source and irrigating all that moved or felt. Its

romance was the more appreciable because it was comprehensible to the

minds that sprang from it; there were mysteries in it, but mysteries

that enticed rather than baffled, for they unfolded new glories with

every discovery that man could make; even inanimate objects, the fossil,

the electric current, the far-off stars, these were dust thrown off by

the Spirit of the World--fragrant with His Presence and eloquent of His

Nature. For example, the announcement made by Klein, the astronomer,

twenty years before, that the inhabitation of certain planets had become

a certified fact--how vastly this had altered men’s views of themselves.

But the one condition of progress and the building of Jerusalem, on the

planet that happened to be men’s dwelling place, was peace, not the

sword which Christ brought or that which Mahomet wielded; but peace that

arose from, not passed, understanding; the peace that sprang from a

knowledge that man was all and was able to develop himself only by

sympathy with his fellows. To Oliver and his wife, then, the last

century seemed like a revelation; little by little the old superstitions

had died, and the new light broadened; the Spirit of the World had

roused Himself, the sun had dawned in the west; and now with horror and

loathing they had seen the clouds gather once more in the quarter whence

all superstition had had its birth.

* * * * *

Mabel got up presently and came across to her husband.

“My dear,” she said, “you must not be downhearted. It all may pass as it

passed before. It is a great thing that they are listening to America at

all. And this Mr. Felsenburgh seems to be on the right side.”

Oliver took her hand and kissed it.

II

Oliver seemed altogether depressed at breakfast, half an hour later. His

mother, an old lady of nearly eighty, who never appeared till noon,

seemed to see it at once, for after a look or two at him and a word, she

subsided into silence behind her plate.

It was a pleasant little room in which they sat, immediately behind

Oliver’s own, and was furnished, according to universal custom, in light

green. Its windows looked out upon a strip of garden at the back, and

the high creeper-grown wall that separated that domain from the next.

The furniture, too, was of the usual sort; a sensible round table stood

in the middle, with three tall arm-chairs, with the proper angles and

rests, drawn up to it; and the centre of it, resting apparently on a

broad round column, held the dishes. It was thirty years now since the

practice of placing the dining-room above the kitchen, and of raising

and lowering the courses by hydraulic power into the centre of the

dining-table, had become universal in the houses of the well-to-do. The

floor consisted entirely of the asbestos cork preparation invented in

America, noiseless, clean, and pleasant to both foot and eye.

Mabel broke the silence.

“And your speech to-morrow?” she asked, taking up her fork.

Oliver brightened a little, and began to discourse.

It seemed that Birmingham was beginning to fret. They were crying out

once more for free trade with America: European facilities were not

enough, and it was Oliver’s business to keep them quiet. It was useless,

he proposed to tell them, to agitate until the Eastern business was

settled: they must not bother the Government with such details just now.

He was to tell them, too, that the Government was wholly on their side;

that it was bound to come soon.

“They are pig-headed,” he added fiercely; “pig-headed and selfish; they

are like children who cry for food ten minutes before dinner-time: it is

bound to come if they will wait a little.”

“And you will tell them so?”

“That they are pig-headed? Certainly.”

Mabel looked at her husband with a pleased twinkle in her eyes. She knew

perfectly well that his popularity rested largely on his outspokenness:

folks liked to be scolded and abused by a genial bold man who danced and

gesticulated in a magnetic fury; she liked it herself.

“How shall you go?” she asked.

“Volor. I shall catch the eighteen o’clock at Blackfriars; the meeting

is at nineteen, and I shall be back at twenty-one.”

He addressed himself vigorously to his _entree_, and his mother looked

up with a patient, old-woman smile.

Mabel began to drum her fingers softly on the damask.

“Please make haste, my dear,” she said; “I have to be at Brighton at

three.”

Oliver gulped his last mouthful, pushed his plate over the line, glanced

to see if all plates were there, and then put his hand beneath the

table.

Instantly, without a sound, the centre-piece vanished, and the three

waited unconcernedly while the clink of dishes came from beneath.

Old Mrs. Brand was a hale-looking old lady, rosy and wrinkled, with the

mantilla head-dress of fifty years ago; but she, too, looked a little

depressed this morning. The _entree_ was not very successful, she

thought; the new food-stuff was not up to the old, it was a trifle

gritty: she would see about it afterwards. There was a clink, a soft

sound like a push, and the centre-piece snapped into its place, bearing

an admirable imitation of a roasted fowl.

Oliver and his wife were alone again for a minute or two after breakfast

before Mabel started down the path to catch the 14¹⁄₂ o’clock 4th grade

sub-trunk line to the junction.

“What’s the matter with mother?” he said.

“Oh! it’s the food-stuff again: she’s never got accustomed to it; she

says it doesn’t suit her.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, my dear, I am sure of it. She hasn’t said a word lately.”

Oliver watched his wife go down the path, reassured. He had been a

little troubled once or twice lately by an odd word or two that his

mother had let fall. She had been brought up a Christian for a few

years, and it seemed to him sometimes as if it had left a taint. There

was an old “Garden of the Soul” that she liked to keep by her, though

she always protested with an appearance of scorn that it was nothing but

nonsense. Still, Oliver would have preferred that she had burned it:

superstition was a desperate thing for retaining life, and, as the brain

weakened, might conceivably reassert itself. Christianity was both wild

and dull, he told himself, wild because of its obvious grotesqueness and

impossibility, and dull because it was so utterly apart from the

exhilarating stream of human life; it crept dustily about still, he

knew, in little dark churches here and there; it screamed with

hysterical sentimentality in Westminster Cathedral which he had once

entered and looked upon with a kind of disgusted fury; it gabbled

strange, false words to the incompetent and the old and the half-witted.

But it would be too dreadful if his own mother ever looked upon it again

with favour.

Oliver himself, ever since he could remember, had been violently opposed

to the concessions to Rome and Ireland. It was intolerable that these

two places should be definitely yielded up to this foolish, treacherous

nonsense: they were hot-beds of sedition; plague-spots on the face of

humanity. He had never agreed with those who said that it was better

that all the poison of the West should be gathered rather than

dispersed. But, at any rate, there it was. Rome had been given up wholly

to that old man in white in exchange for all the parish churches and

cathedrals of Italy, and it was understood that mediaeval darkness

reigned there supreme; and Ireland, after receiving Home Rule thirty

years before, had declared for Catholicism, and opened her arms to

Individualism in its most virulent form. England had laughed and

assented, for she was saved from a quantity of agitation by the

immediate departure of half her Catholic population for that island, and

had, consistently with her Communist-colonial policy, granted every

facility for Individualism to reduce itself there _ad absurdum_. All

kinds of funny things were happening there: Oliver had read with a

bitter amusement of new appearances there, of a Woman in Blue and

shrines raised where her feet had rested; but he was scarcely amused at

Rome, for the movement to Turin of the Italian Government had deprived

the Republic of quite a quantity of sentimental prestige, and had haloed

the old religious nonsense with all the meretriciousness of historical

association. However, it obviously could not last much longer: the world

was beginning to understand at last.

He stood a moment or two at the door after his wife had gone, drinking

in reassurance from that glorious vision of solid sense that spread

itself before his eyes: the endless house-roofs; the high glass vaults

of the public baths and gymnasiums; the pinnacled schools where

Citizenship was taught each morning; the spider-like cranes and

scaffoldings that rose here and there; and even the few pricking spires

did not disconcert him. There it stretched away into the grey haze of

London, really beautiful, this vast hive of men and women who had

learned at least the primary lesson of the gospel that there was no God

but man, no priest but the politician, no prophet but the schoolmaster.

Then he went back once more to his speech-constructing.

* * * * *

Mabel, too, was a little thoughtful as she sat with her paper on her

lap, spinning down the broad line to Brighton. This Eastern news was

more disconcerting to her than she allowed her husband to see; yet it

seemed incredible that there could be any real danger of invasion. This

Western life was so sensible and peaceful; folks had their feet at last

upon the rock, and it was unthinkable that they could ever be forced

back on to the mud-flats: it was contrary to the whole law of

development. Yet she could not but recognise that catastrophe seemed one

of nature’s methods....

She sat very quiet, glancing once or twice at the meagre little scrap

of news, and read the leading article upon it: that too seemed

significant of dismay. A couple of men were talking in the

half-compartment beyond on the same subject; one described the

Government engineering works that he had visited, the breathless haste

that dominated them; the other put in interrogations and questions.

There was not much comfort there. There were no windows through which

she could look; on the main lines the speed was too great for the eyes;

the long compartment flooded with soft light bounded her horizon. She

stared at the moulded white ceiling, the delicious oak-framed paintings,

the deep spring-seats, the mellow globes overhead that poured out

radiance, at a mother and child diagonally opposite her. Then the great

chord sounded; the faint vibration increased ever so slightly; and an

instant later the automatic doors ran back, and she stepped out on to

the platform of Brighton station.

As she went down the steps leading to the station square she noticed a

priest going before her. He seemed a very upright and sturdy old man,

for though his hair was white he walked steadily and strongly. At the

foot of the steps he stopped and half turned, and then, to her surprise,

she saw that his face was that of a young man, fine-featured and strong,

with black eyebrows and very bright grey eyes. Then she passed on and

began to cross the square in the direction of her aunt’s house.

Then without the slightest warning, except one shrill hoot from

overhead, a number of things happened.

A great shadow whirled across the sunlight at her feet, a sound of

rending tore the air, and a noise like a giant’s sigh; and, as she

stopped bewildered, with a noise like ten thousand smashed kettles, a

huge thing crashed on the rubber pavement before her, where it lay,

filling half the square, writhing long wings on its upper side that beat

and whirled like the flappers of some ghastly extinct monster, pouring

out human screams, and beginning almost instantly to crawl with broken

life.

Mabel scarcely knew what happened next; but she found herself a moment

later forced forward by some violent pressure from behind, till she

stood shaking from head to foot, with some kind of smashed body of a man

moaning and stretching at her feet. There was a sort of articulate

language coming from it; she caught distinctly the names of Jesus and

Mary; then a voice hissed suddenly in her ears:

“Let me through. I am a priest.”

She stood there a moment longer, dazed by the suddenness of the whole

affair, and watched almost unintelligently the grey-haired young priest

on his knees, with his coat torn open, and a crucifix out; she saw him

bend close, wave his hand in a swift sign, and heard a murmur of a

language she did not know. Then he was up again, holding the crucifix

before him, and she saw him begin to move forward into the midst of the

red-flooded pavement, looking this way and that as if for a signal. Down

the steps of the great hospital on her right came figures running now,

hatless, each carrying what looked like an old-fashioned camera. She

knew what those men were, and her heart leaped in relief. They were the

ministers of euthanasia. Then she felt herself taken by the shoulder and

pulled back, and immediately found herself in the front rank of a crowd

that was swaying and crying out, and behind a line of police and

civilians who had formed themselves into a cordon to keep the pressure

back.

III

Oliver was in a panic of terror as his mother, half an hour later, ran

in with the news that one of the Government volors had fallen in the

station square at Brighton just after the 14¹⁄₂ train had discharged

its passengers. He knew quite well what that meant, for he remembered

one such accident ten years before, just after the law forbidding

private volors had been passed. It meant that every living creature in

it was killed and probably many more in the place where it fell--and

what then? The message was clear enough; she would certainly be in the

square at that time.

He sent a desperate wire to her aunt asking for news; and sat, shaking

in his chair, awaiting the answer. His mother sat by him.

“Please God---” she sobbed out once, and stopped confounded as he turned

on her.

But Fate was merciful, and three minutes before Mr. Phillips toiled up

the path with the answer, Mabel herself came into the room, rather pale

and smiling.

“Christ!” cried Oliver, and gave one huge sob as he sprang up.

She had not a great deal to tell him. There was no explanation of the

disaster published as yet; it seemed that the wings on one side had

simply ceased to work.

She described the shadow, the hiss of sound, and the crash.

Then she stopped.

“Well, my dear?” said her husband, still rather white beneath the eyes

as he sat close to her patting her hand.

“There was a priest there,” said Mabel. “I saw him before, at the

station.”

Oliver gave a little hysterical snort of laughter.

“He was on his knees at once,” she said, “with his crucifix, even before

the doctors came. My dear, do people really believe all that?”

“Why, they think they do,” said her husband.

“It was all so--so sudden; and there he was, just as if he had been

expecting it all. Oliver, how can they?”

“Why, people will believe anything if they begin early enough.”

“And the man seemed to believe it, too--the dying man, I mean. I saw his

eyes.”

She stopped.

“Well, my dear?”

“Oliver, what do you say to people when they are dying?”

“Say! Why, nothing! What can I say? But I don’t think I’ve ever seen any

one die.”

“Nor have I till to-day,” said the girl, and shivered a little. “The

euthanasia people were soon at work.”

Oliver took her hand gently.

“My darling, it must have been frightful. Why, you’re trembling still.”

“No; but listen.... You know, if I had had anything to say I could have

said it too. They were all just in front of me: I wondered; then I knew

I hadn’t. I couldn’t possibly have talked about Humanity.”

“My dear, it’s all very sad; but you know it doesn’t really matter. It’s

all over.”

“And--and they’ve just stopped?”

“Why, yes.”

Mabel compressed her lips a little; then she sighed. She had an agitated

sort of meditation in the train. She knew perfectly that it was sheer

nerves; but she could not just yet shake them off. As she had said, it

was the first time she had seen death.

“And that priest--that priest doesn’t think so?”

“My dear, I’ll tell you what he believes. He believes that that man whom

he showed the crucifix to, and said those words over, is alive

somewhere, in spite of his brain being dead: he is not quite sure where;

but he is either in a kind of smelting works being slowly burned; or, if

he is very lucky, and that piece of wood took effect, he is somewhere

beyond the clouds, before Three Persons who are only One although They

are Three; that there are quantities of other people there, a Woman in

Blue, a great many others in white with their heads under their arms,

and still more with their heads on one side; and that they’ve all got

harps and go on singing for ever and ever, and walking about on the

clouds, and liking it very much indeed. He thinks, too, that all these

nice people are perpetually looking down upon the aforesaid

smelting-works, and praising the Three Great Persons for making them.

That’s what the priest believes. Now you know it’s not likely; that kind

of thing may be very nice, but it isn’t true.”

Mabel smiled pleasantly. She had never heard it put so well.

“No, my dear, you’re quite right. That sort of thing isn’t true. How can

he believe it? He looked quite intelligent!”

“My dear girl, if I had told you in your cradle that the moon was green

cheese, and had hammered at you ever since, every day and all day, that

it was, you’d very nearly believe it by now. Why, you know in your heart

that the euthanatisers are the real priests. Of course you do.”

Mabel sighed with satisfaction and stood up.

“Oliver, you’re a most comforting person. I do like you! There! I must

go to my room: I’m all shaky still.”

Half across the room she stopped and put out a shoe.

“Why---” she began faintly.

There was a curious rusty-looking splash upon it; and her husband saw

her turn white. He rose abruptly.

“My dear,” he said, “don’t be foolish.”

She looked at him, smiled bravely, and went out.

* * * * *

When she was gone, he still sat on a moment where she had left him. Dear

me! how pleased he was! He did not like to think of what life would have

been without her. He had known her since she was twelve--that was seven

years ago-and last year they had gone together to the district official

to make their contract. She had really become very necessary to him. Of

course the world could get on without her, and he supposed that he could

too; but he did not want to have to try. He knew perfectly well, for it

was his creed of human love, that there was between them a double

affection, of mind as well as body; and there was absolutely nothing

else: but he loved her quick intuitions, and to hear his own thought

echoed so perfectly. It was like two flames added together to make a

third taller than either: of course one flame could burn without the

other--in fact, one would have to, one day--but meantime the warmth and

light were exhilarating. Yes, he was delighted that she happened to be

clear of the falling volor.

He gave no more thought to his exposition of the Christian creed; it was

a mere commonplace to him that Catholics believed that kind of thing; it

was no more blasphemous to his mind so to describe it, than it would be

to laugh at a Fijian idol with mother-of-pearl eyes, and a horse-hair

wig; it was simply impossible to treat it seriously. He, too, had

wondered once or twice in his life how human beings could believe such

rubbish; but psychology had helped him, and he knew now well enough that

suggestion will do almost anything. And it was this hateful thing that

had so long restrained the euthanasia movement with all its splendid

mercy.

His brows wrinkled a little as he remembered his mother’s exclamation,

“Please God”; then he smiled at the poor old thing and her pathetic

childishness, and turned once more to his table, thinking in spite of

himself of his wife’s hesitation as she had seen the splash of blood on

her shoe. Blood! Yes; that was as much a fact as anything else. How was

it to be dealt with? Why, by the glorious creed of Humanity--that

splendid God who died and rose again ten thousand times a day, who had

died daily like the old cracked fanatic Saul of Tarsus, ever since the

world began, and who rose again, not once like the Carpenter’s Son, but

with every child that came into the world. That was the answer; and was

it not overwhelmingly sufficient?

Mr. Phillips came in an hour later with another bundle of papers.

“No more news from the East, sir,” he said.

CHAPTER II

I

Percy Franklin’s correspondence with the Cardinal-Protector of England

occupied him directly for at least two hours every day, and for nearly

eight hours indirectly.

For the past eight years the methods of the Holy See had once more been

revised with a view to modern needs, and now every important province

throughout the world possessed not only an administrative metropolitan

but a representative in Rome whose business it was to be in touch with

the Pope on the one side and the people he represented on the other. In

other words, centralisation had gone forward rapidly, in accordance with

the laws of life; and, with centralisation, freedom of method and

expansion of power. England’s Cardinal-Protector was one Abbot Martin, a

Benedictine, and it was Percy’s business, as of a dozen more bishops,

priests and laymen (with whom, by the way, he was forbidden to hold any

formal consultation), to write a long daily letter to him on affairs

that came under his notice.

It was a curious life, therefore, that Percy led. He had a couple of

rooms assigned to him in Archbishop’s House at Westminster, and was

attached loosely to the Cathedral staff, although with considerable

liberty. He rose early, and went to meditation for an hour, after which

he said his mass. He took his coffee soon after, said a little office,

and then settled down to map out his letter. At ten o’clock he was ready

to receive callers, and till noon he was generally busy with both those

who came to see him on their own responsibility and his staff of

half-a-dozen reporters whose business it was to bring him marked

paragraphs in the newspapers and their own comments. He then breakfasted

with the other priests in the house, and set out soon after to call on

people whose opinion was necessary, returning for a cup of tea soon

after sixteen o’clock. Then he settled down, after the rest of his

office and a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, to compose his letter,

which though short, needed a great deal of care and sifting. After

dinner he made a few notes for next day, received visitors again, and

went to bed soon after twenty-two o’clock. Twice a week it was his

business to assist at Vespers in the afternoon, and he usually sang high

mass on Saturdays.

It was, therefore, a curiously distracting life, with peculiar dangers.

It was one day, a week or two after his visit to Brighton, that he was

just finishing his letter, when his servant looked in to tell him that

Father Francis was below.

“In ten minutes,” said Percy, without looking up.

He snapped off his last lines, drew out the sheet, and settled down to

read it over, translating it unconsciously from Latin to English.

“WESTMINSTER, May 14th.

“EMINENCE: Since yesterday I have a little more information. It appears

certain that the Bill establishing Esperanto for all State purposes will

be brought in in June. I have had this from Johnson. This, as I have

pointed out before, is the very last stone in our consolidation with the

continent, which, at present, is to be regretted.... A great access of

Jews to Freemasonry is to be expected; hitherto they have held aloof to

some extent, but the ‘abolition of the Idea of God’ is tending to draw

in those Jews, now greatly on the increase once more, who repudiate all

notion of a personal Messiah. It is ‘Humanity’ here, too, that is at

work. To-day I heard the Rabbi Simeon speak to this effect in the City,

and was impressed by the applause he received.... Yet among others an

expectation is growing that a man will presently be found to lead the

Communist movement and unite their forces more closely. I enclose a

verbose cutting from the _New People_ to that effect; and it is echoed

everywhere. They say that the cause must give birth to one such soon;

that they have had prophets and precursors for a hundred years past, and

lately a cessation of them. It is strange how this coincides

superficially with Christian ideas. Your Eminence will observe that a

simile of the ‘ninth wave’ is used with some eloquence.... I hear to-day

of the secession of an old Catholic family, the Wargraves of Norfolk,

with their chaplain Micklem, who it seems has been busy in this

direction for some while. The _Epoch_ announces it with satisfaction,

owing to the peculiar circumstances; but unhappily such events are not

uncommon now.... There is much distrust among the laity. Seven priests

in Westminster diocese have left us within the last three months; on the

other hand, I have pleasure in telling your Eminence that his Grace

received into Catholic Communion this morning the ex-Anglican Bishop of

Carlisle, with half-a-dozen of his clergy. This has been expected for

some weeks past. I append also cuttings from the _Tribune_, the _London

Trumpet_, and the _Observer_, with my comments upon them. Your Eminence

will see how great the excitement is with regard to the last.

“_Recommendation._ That formal excommunication of the Wargraves and

these eight priests should be issued in Norfolk and Westminster

respectively, and no further notice taken.”

Percy laid down the sheet, gathered up the half dozen other papers that

contained his extracts and running commentary, signed the last, and

slipped the whole into the printed envelope that lay ready.

Then he took up his biretta and went to the lift.

* * * * *

The moment he came into the glass-doored parlour he saw that the crisis

was come, if not passed already. Father Francis looked miserably ill,

but there was a curious hardness, too, about his eyes and mouth, as he

stood waiting. He shook his head abruptly.

“I have come to say good-bye, father. I can bear it no more.”

Percy was careful to show no emotion at all. He made a little sign to a

chair, and himself sat down too. “It is an end of everything,” said the

other again in a perfectly steady voice. “I believe nothing. I have

believed nothing for a year now.”

“You have felt nothing, you mean,” said Percy.

“That won’t do, father,” went on the other. “I tell you there is nothing

left. I can’t even argue now. It is just good-bye.”

Percy had nothing to say. He had talked to this man during a period of

over eight months, ever since Father Francis had first confided in him

that his faith was going. He understood perfectly what a strain it had

been; he felt bitterly compassionate towards this poor creature who had

become caught up somehow into the dizzy triumphant whirl of the New

Humanity. External facts were horribly strong just now; and faith,

except to one who had learned that Will and Grace were all and emotion

nothing, was as a child crawling about in the midst of some huge

machinery: it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of

steel to keep steady. It was hard to know where blame could be assigned;

yet Percy’s faith told him that there was blame due. In the ages of

faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these

searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for

long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The

alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from

one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural

perception to understand their practical inadequacy. And as regards

Father Francis’s personal responsibility, he could not help feeling that

the other had allowed ceremonial to play too great a part in his

religion, and prayer too little. In him the external had absorbed the

internal.

So he did not allow his sympathy to show itself in his bright eyes.

“You think it my fault, of course,” said the other sharply.

“My dear father,” said Percy, motionless in his chair, “I know it is

your fault. Listen to me. You say Christianity is absurd and impossible.

Now, you know, it cannot be that! It may be untrue--I am not speaking of

that now, even though I am perfectly certain that it is absolutely

true--but it cannot be absurd so long as educated and virtuous people

continue to hold it. To say that it is absurd is simple pride; it is to

dismiss all who believe in it as not merely mistaken, but unintelligent

as well---”

“Very well, then,” interrupted the other; “then suppose I withdraw that,

and simply say that I do not believe it to be true.”

“You do not withdraw it,” continued Percy serenely; “you still really

believe it to be absurd: you have told me so a dozen times. Well, I

repeat, that is pride, and quite sufficient to account for it all. It is

the moral attitude that matters. There may be other things too---”

Father Francis looked up sharply.

“Oh! the old story!” he said sneeringly.

“If you tell me on your word of honour that there is no woman in the

case, or no particular programme of sin you propose to work out, I shall

believe you. But it is an old story, as you say.”

“I swear to you there is not,” cried the other.

“Thank God then!” said Percy. “There are fewer obstacles to a return of

faith.”

There was silence for a moment after that. Percy had really no more to

say. He had talked to him of the inner life again and again, in which

verities are seen to be true, and acts of faith are ratified; he had

urged prayer and humility till he was almost weary of the names; and had

been met by the retort that this was to advise sheer self-hypnotism; and

he had despaired of making clear to one who did not see it for himself

that while Love and Faith may be called self-hypnotism from one angle,

yet from another they are as much realities as, for example, artistic

faculties, and need similar cultivation; that they produce a conviction

that they are convictions, that they handle and taste things which when

handled and tasted are overwhelmingly more real and objective than the

things of sense. Evidences seemed to mean nothing to this man.

So he was silent now, chilled himself by the presence of this crisis,

looking unseeingly out upon the plain, little old-world parlour, its

tall window, its strip of matting, conscious chiefly of the dreary

hopelessness of this human brother of his who had eyes but did not see,

ears and was deaf. He wished he would say good-bye, and go. There was no

more to be done.

Father Francis, who had been sitting in a lax kind of huddle, seemed to

know his thoughts, and sat up suddenly.

“You are tired of me,” he said. “I will go.”

“I am not tired of you, my dear father,” said Percy simply. “I am only

terribly sorry. You see I know that it is all true.”

The other looked at him heavily.

“And I know that it is not,” he said. “It is very beautiful; I wish I

could believe it. I don’t think I shall be ever happy again--but--but

there it is.”

Percy sighed. He had told him so often that the heart is as divine a

gift as the mind, and that to neglect it in the search for God is to

seek ruin, but this priest had scarcely seen the application to himself.

He had answered with the old psychological arguments that the

suggestions of education accounted for everything.

“I suppose you will cast me off,” said the other.

“It is you who are leaving me,” said Percy. “I cannot follow, if you

mean that.”

“But--but cannot we be friends?”

A sudden heat touched the elder priest’s heart.

“Friends?” he said. “Is sentimentality all you mean by friendship? What

kind of friends can we be?”

The other’s face became suddenly heavy.

“I thought so.”

“John!” cried Percy. “You see that, do you not? How can we pretend

anything when you do not believe in God? For I do you the honour of

thinking that you do not.”

Francis sprang up.

“Well---” he snapped. “I could not have believed--I am going.”

He wheeled towards the door.

“John!” said Percy again. “Are you going like this? Can you not shake

hands?”

The other wheeled again, with heavy anger in his face.

“Why, you said you could not be friends with me!”

Percy’s mouth opened. Then he understood, and smiled. “Oh! that is all

you mean by friendship, is it?--I beg your pardon. Oh! we can be polite

to one another, if you like.”

He still stood holding out his hand. Father Francis looked at it a

moment, his lips shook: then once more he turned, and went out without a

word.

II

Percy stood motionless until he heard the automatic bell outside tell

him that Father Francis was really gone, then he went out himself and

turned towards the long passage leading to the Cathedral. As he passed

out through the sacristy he heard far in front the murmur of an organ,

and on coming through into the chapel used as a parish church he

perceived that Vespers were not yet over in the great choir. He came

straight down the aisle, turned to the right, crossed the centre and

knelt down.

It was drawing on towards sunset, and the huge dark place was lighted

here and there by patches of ruddy London light that lay on the gorgeous

marble and gildings finished at last by a wealthy convert. In front of

him rose up the choir, with a line of white surpliced and furred canons

on either side, and the vast baldachino in the midst, beneath which

burned the six lights as they had burned day by day for more than a

century; behind that again lay the high line of the apse-choir with the

dim, window-pierced vault above where Christ reigned in majesty. He let

his eyes wander round for a few moments before beginning his deliberate

prayer, drinking in the glory of the place, listening to the thunderous

chorus, the peal of the organ, and the thin mellow voice of the priest.

There on the left shone the refracted glow of the lamps that burned

before the Lord in the Sacrament, on the right a dozen candles winked

here and there at the foot of the gaunt images, high overhead hung the

gigantic cross with that lean, emaciated Poor Man Who called all who

looked on Him to the embraces of a God.

Then he hid his face in his hands, drew a couple of long breaths, and

set to work.

He began, as his custom was in mental prayer, by a deliberate act of

self-exclusion from the world of sense. Under the image of sinking

beneath a surface he forced himself downwards and inwards, till the peal

of the organ, the shuffle of footsteps, the rigidity of the chair-back

beneath his wrists--all seemed apart and external, and he was left a

single person with a beating heart, an intellect that suggested image

after image, and emotions that were too languid to stir themselves. Then

he made his second descent, renounced all that he possessed and was, and

became conscious that even the body was left behind, and that his mind

and heart, awed by the Presence in which they found themselves, clung

close and obedient to the will which was their lord and protector. He

drew another long breath, or two, as he felt that Presence surge about

him; he repeated a few mechanical words, and sank to that peace which

follows the relinquishment of thought.

There he rested for a while. Far above him sounded the ecstatic music,

the cry of trumpets and the shrilling of the flutes; but they were as

insignificant street-noises to one who was falling asleep. He was within

the veil of things now, beyond the barriers of sense and reflection, in

that secret place to which he had learned the road by endless effort, in

that strange region where realities are evident, where perceptions go to

and fro with the swiftness of light, where the swaying will catches now

this, now that act, moulds it and speeds it; where all things meet,

where truth is known and handled and tasted, where God Immanent is one

with God Transcendent, where the meaning of the external world is

evident through its inner side, and the Church and its mysteries are

seen from within a haze of glory.

So he lay a few moments, absorbing and resting.

Then he aroused himself to consciousness and began to speak.

“Lord, I am here, and Thou art here. I know Thee. There is nothing else

but Thou and I.... I lay this all in Thy hands--Thy apostate priest, Thy

people, the world, and myself. I spread it before Thee--I spread it

before Thee.”

He paused, poised in the act, till all of which he thought lay like a

plain before a peak.

... “Myself, Lord--there but for Thy grace should I be going, in

darkness and misery. It is Thou Who dost preserve me. Maintain and

finish Thy work within my soul. Let me not falter for one instant. If

Thou withdraw Thy hand I fall into utter nothingness.”

So his soul stood a moment, with outstretched appealing hands, helpless

and confident. Then the will flickered in self-consciousness, and he

repeated acts of faith, hope and love to steady it. Then he drew another

long breath, feeling the Presence tingle and shake about him, and began

again.

“Lord; look on Thy people. Many are falling from Thee. _Ne in aeternum

irascaris nobis. Ne in aeternum irascaris nobis_.... I unite myself with

all saints and angels and Mary Queen of Heaven; look on them and me, and

hear us. _Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam._ Thy light and Thy truth!

Lay not on us heavier burdens than we can bear. Lord, why dost Thou not

speak!”

He writhed himself forward in a passion of expectant desire, hearing his

muscles crack in the effort. Once more he relaxed himself; and the swift

play of wordless acts began which he knew to be the very heart of

prayer. The eyes of his soul flew hither and thither, from Calvary to

heaven and back again to the tossing troubled earth. He saw Christ dying

of desolation while the earth rocked and groaned; Christ reigning as a

priest upon His Throne in robes of light, Christ patient and inexorably

silent within the Sacramental species; and to each in turn he directed

the eyes of the Eternal Father....

Then he waited for communications, and they came, so soft and delicate,

passing like shadows, that his will sweated blood and tears in the

effort to catch and fix them and correspond....

He saw the Body Mystical in its agony, strained over the world as on a

cross, silent with pain; he saw this and that nerve wrenched and

twisted, till pain presented it to himself as under the guise of flashes

of colour; he saw the life-blood drop by drop run down from His head and

hands and feet. The world was gathered mocking and good-humoured

beneath. “_He saved others: Himself He cannot save.... Let Christ come

down from the Cross and we will believe._” Far away behind bushes and

in holes of the ground the friends of Jesus peeped and sobbed; Mary

herself was silent, pierced by seven swords; the disciple whom He loved

had no words of comfort.

He saw, too, how no word would be spoken from heaven; the angels

themselves were bidden to put sword into sheath, and wait on the eternal

patience of God, for the agony was hardly yet begun; there were a

thousand horrors yet before the end could come, that final sum of

crucifixion.... He must wait and watch, content to stand there and do

nothing; and the Resurrection must seem to him no more than a dreamed-of

hope. There was the Sabbath yet to come, while the Body Mystical must

lie in its sepulchre cut off from light, and even the dignity of the

Cross must be withdrawn and the knowledge that Jesus lived. That inner

world, to which by long effort he had learned the way, was all alight

with agony; it was bitter as brine, it was of that pale luminosity that

is the utmost product of pain, it hummed in his ears with a note that

rose to a scream ... it pressed upon him, penetrated him, stretched him

as on a rack.... And with that his will grew sick and nerveless.

“Lord! I cannot bear it!” he moaned....

In an instant he was back again, drawing long breaths of misery. He

passed his tongue over his lips, and opened his eyes on the darkening

apse before him. The organ was silent now, and the choir was gone, and

the lights out. The sunset colour, too, had faded from the walls, and

grim cold faces looked down on him from wall and vault. He was back

again on the surface of life; the vision had melted; he scarcely knew

what it was that he had seen.

But he must gather up the threads, and by sheer effort absorb them. He

must pay his duty, too, to the Lord that gave Himself to the senses as

well as to the inner spirit. So he rose, stiff and constrained, and

passed across to the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.

As he came out from the block of chairs, very upright and tall, with his

biretta once more on his white hair, he saw an old woman watching him

very closely. He hesitated an instant, wondering whether she were a

penitent, and as he hesitated she made a movement towards him.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she began.

She was not a Catholic then. He lifted his biretta.

“Can I do anything for you?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but were you at Brighton, at the accident two

months ago?”

“I was.”

“Ah! I thought so: my daughter-in-law saw you then.”

Percy had a spasm of impatience: he was a little tired of being

identified by his white hair and young face.

“Were you there, madam?”

She looked at him doubtfully and curiously, moving her old, eyes up and

down his figure. Then she recollected herself.

“No, sir; it was my daughter-in-law--I beg your pardon, sir, but---”

“Well?” asked Percy, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice.

“Are you the Archbishop, sir?”

The priest smiled, showing his white teeth.

“No, madam; I am just a poor priest. Dr. Cholmondeley is Archbishop. I

am Father Percy Franklin.”

She said nothing, but still looking at him made a little old-world

movement of a bow; and Percy passed on to the dim, splendid chapel to

pay his devotions.

III

There was great talk that night at dinner among the priests as to the

extraordinary spread of Freemasonry. It had been going on for many years

now, and Catholics perfectly recognised its dangers, for the profession

of Masonry had been for some centuries rendered incompatible with

religion through the Church’s unswerving condemnation of it. A man must

choose between that and his faith. Things had developed extraordinarily

during the last century. First there had been the organised assault upon

the Church in France; and what Catholics had always suspected then

became a certainty in the revelations of 1918, when P. Gerome, the

Dominican and ex-Mason, had made his disclosures with regard to the

Mark-Masons. It had become evident then that Catholics had been right,

and that Masonry, in its higher grades at least, had been responsible

throughout the world for the strange movement against religion. But he

had died in his bed, and the public had been impressed by that fact.

Then came the splendid donations in France and Italy--to hospitals,

orphanages, and the like; and once more suspicion began to disappear.

After all, it seemed--and continued to seem--for seventy years and more

that Masonry was nothing more than a vast philanthropical society. Now

once more men had their doubts.

“I hear that Felsenburgh is a Mason,” observed Monsignor Macintosh, the

Cathedral Administrator. “A Grand-Master or something.”

“But who is Felsenburgh?” put in a young priest.

Monsignor pursed his lips and shook his head. He was one of those humble

persons as proud of ignorance as others of knowledge. He boasted that he

never read the papers nor any book except those that had received the

_imprimatur_; it was a priest’s business, he often remarked, to preserve

the faith, not to acquire worldly knowledge. Percy had occasionally

rather envied his point of view.

“He’s a mystery,” said another priest, Father Blackmore; “but he seems

to be causing great excitement. They were selling his ‘Life’ to-day on

the Embankment.”

“I met an American senator,” put in Percy, “three days ago, who told me

that even there they know nothing of him, except his extraordinary

eloquence. He only appeared last year, and seems to have carried

everything before him by quite unusual methods. He is a great linguist,

too. That is why they took him to Irkutsk.”

“Well, the Masons---” went on Monsignor. “It is very serious. In the

last month four of my penitents have left me because of it.”

“Their inclusion of women was their master-stroke,” growled Father

Blackmore, helping himself to claret.

“It is extraordinary that they hesitated so long about that,” observed

Percy.

A couple of the others added their evidence. It appeared that they, too,

had lost penitents lately through the spread of Masonry. It was rumoured

that a Pastoral was a-preparing upstairs on the subject.

Monsignor shook his head ominously.

“More is wanted than that,” he said.

Percy pointed out that the Church had said her last word several

centuries ago. She had laid her excommunication on all members of secret

societies, and there was really no more that she could do.

“Except bring it before her children again and again,” put in Monsignor.

“I shall preach on it next Sunday.”

* * * * *

Percy dotted down a note when he reached his room, determining to say

another word or two on the subject to the Cardinal-Protector. He had

mentioned Freemasonry often before, but it seemed time for another

remark. Then he opened his letters, first turning to one which he

recognised as from the Cardinal.

It seemed a curious coincidence, as he read a series of questions that

Cardinal Martin’s letter contained, that one of them should be on this

very subject. It ran as follows:

“What of Masonry? Felsenburgh is said to be one. Gather all the gossip

you can about him. Send any English or American biographies of him. Are

you still losing Catholics through Masonry?”

He ran his eyes down the rest of the questions. They chiefly referred to

previous remarks of his own, but twice, even in them, Felsenburgh’s name

appeared.

He laid the paper down and considered a little.

It was very curious, he thought, how this man’s name was in every one’s

mouth, in spite of the fact that so little was known about him. He had

bought in the streets, out of curiosity, three photographs that

professed to represent this strange person, and though one of them might

be genuine they all three could not be. He drew them out of a

pigeon-hole, and spread them before him.

One represented a fierce, bearded creature like a Cossack, with round

staring eyes. No; intrinsic evidence condemned this: it was exactly how

a coarse imagination would have pictured a man who seemed to be having a

great influence in the East.

The second showed a fat face with little eyes and a chin-beard. That

might conceivably be genuine: he turned it over and saw the name of a

New York firm on the back. Then he turned to the third. This presented a

long, clean-shaven face with pince-nez, undeniably clever, but scarcely

strong: and Felsenburgh was obviously a strong man.

Percy inclined to think the second was the most probable; but they were

all unconvincing; and he shuffled them carelessly together and replaced

them.

Then he put his elbows on the table, and began to think.

He tried to remember what Mr. Varhaus, the American senator, had told

him of Felsenburgh; yet it did not seem sufficient to account for the

facts. Felsenburgh, it seemed, had employed none of those methods common

in modern politics. He controlled no newspapers, vituperated nobody,

championed nobody: he had no picked underlings; he used no bribes; there

were no monstrous crimes alleged against him. It seemed rather as if his

originality lay in his clean hands and his stainless past--that, and his

magnetic character. He was the kind of figure that belonged rather to

the age of chivalry: a pure, clean, compelling personality, like a

radiant child. He had taken people by surprise, then, rising out of the

heaving dun-coloured waters of American socialism like a vision--from

those waters so fiercely restrained from breaking into storm over since

the extraordinary social revolution under Mr. Hearst’s disciples, a

century ago. That had been the end of plutocracy; the famous old laws of

1914 had burst some of the stinking bubbles of the time; and the

enactments of 1916 and 1917 had prevented their forming again in any

thing like their previous force. It had been the salvation of America,

undoubtedly, even if that salvation were of a dreary and uninspiring

description; and now out of the flat socialistic level had arisen this

romantic figure utterly unlike any that had preceded it.... So the

senator had hinted.... It was too complicated for Percy just now, and he

gave it up.

It was a weary world, he told himself, turning his eyes homewards.

Everything seemed so hopeless and ineffective. He tried not to reflect

on his fellow-priests, but for the fiftieth time he could not help

seeing that they were not the men for the present situation. It was not

that he preferred himself; he knew perfectly well that he, too, was

fully as incompetent: had he not proved to be so with poor Father

Francis, and scores of others who had clutched at him in their agony

during the last ten years? Even the Archbishop, holy man as he was, with

all his childlike faith--was that the man to lead English Catholics and

confound their enemies? There seemed no giants on the earth in these

days. What in the world was to be done? He buried his face in his

hands....

Yes; what was wanted was a new Order in the Church; the old ones were

rule-bound through no fault of their own. An Order was wanted without

habit or tonsure, without traditions or customs, an Order with nothing

but entire and whole-hearted devotion, without pride even in their most

sacred privileges, without a past history in which they might take

complacent refuge. They must be _franc-tireurs_ of Christ’s Army; like

the Jesuits, but without their fatal reputation, which, again, was no

fault of their own. ... But there must be a Founder--Who, in God’s Name?

--a Founder _nudus sequens Christum nudum_.... Yes--_Franc-tireurs_

--priests, bishops, laymen and women--with the three vows of course, and

a special clause forbidding utterly and for ever their ownership of

corporate wealth.--Every gift received must be handed to the bishop of

the diocese in which it was given, who must provide them himself with

necessaries of life and travel. Oh!--what could they not do?... He was

off in a rhapsody.

Presently he recovered, and called himself a fool. Was not that scheme

as old as the eternal hills, and as useless for practical purposes? Why,

it had been the dream of every zealous man since the First Year of

Salvation that such an Order should be founded!... He was a fool....

Then once more he began to think of it all over again.

Surely it was this which was wanted against the Masons; and women,

too.--Had not scheme after scheme broken down because men had forgotten

the power of women? It was that lack that had ruined Napoleon: he had

trusted Josephine, and she had failed him; so he had trusted no other

woman. In the Catholic Church, too, woman had been given no active work

but either menial or connected with education: and was there not room

for other activities than those? Well, it was useless to think of it. It

was not his affair. If _Papa Angelicus_ who now reigned in Rome had not

thought of it, why should a foolish, conceited priest in Westminster set

himself up to do so?

So he beat himself on the breast once more, and took up his office-book.

He finished in half an hour, and again sat thinking; but this time it

was of poor Father Francis. He wondered what he was doing now; whether

he had taken off the Roman collar of Christ’s familiar slaves? The poor

devil! And how far was he, Percy Franklin, responsible?

When a tap came at his door presently, and Father Blackmore looked in

for a talk before going to bed, Percy told him what had happened.

Father Blackmore removed his pipe and sighed deliberately.

“I knew it was coming,” he said. “Well, well.”

“He has been honest enough,” explained Percy. “He told me eight months

ago he was in trouble.”

Father Blackmore drew upon his pipe thoughtfully.

“Father Franklin,” he said, “things are really very serious. There is

the same story everywhere. What in the world is happening?”

Percy paused before answering.

“I think these things go in waves,” he said.

“Waves, do you think?” said the other.

“What else?”

Father Blackmore looked at him intently.

“It is more like a dead calm, it seems to me,” he said. “Have you ever

been in a typhoon?”

Percy shook his head.

“Well,” went on the other, “the most ominous thing is the calm. The sea

is like oil; you feel half-dead: you can do nothing. Then comes the

storm.”

Percy looked at him, interested. He had not seen this mood in the priest

before.

“Before every great crash there comes this calm. It is always so in

history. It was so before the Eastern War; it was so before the French

Revolution. It was so before the Reformation. There is a kind of oily

heaving; and everything is languid. So everything has been in America,

too, for over eighty years.... Father Franklin, I think something is

going to happen.”

“Tell me,” said Percy, leaning forward.

“Well, I saw Templeton a week before he died, and he put the idea in my

head.... Look here, father. It may be this Eastern affair that is coming

on us; but somehow I don’t think it is. It is in religion that something

is going to happen. At least, so I think.... Father, who in God’s name

is Felsenburgh?”

Percy was so startled at the sudden introduction of this name again,

that he stared a moment without speaking.

Outside, the summer night was very still. There was a faint vibration

now and again from the underground track that ran twenty yards from the

house where they sat; but the streets were quiet enough round the

Cathedral. Once a hoot rang far away, as if some ominous bird of passage

were crossing between London and the stars, and once the cry of a woman

sounded thin and shrill from the direction of the river. For the rest

there was no more than the solemn, subdued hum that never ceased now

night or day.

“Yes; Felsenburgh,” said Father Blackmore once more. “I cannot get that

man out of my head. And yet, what do I know of him? What does any one

know of him?”

Percy licked his lips to answer, and drew a breath to still the beating

of his heart. He could not imagine why he felt excited. After all, who

was old Blackmore to frighten him? But old Blackmore went on before he

could speak.

“See how people are leaving the Church! The Wargraves, the Hendersons,

Sir James Bartlet, Lady Magnier, and then all the priests. Now they’re

not all knaves--I wish they were; it would be so much easier to talk of

it. But Sir James Bartlet, last month! Now, there’s a man who has spent

half his fortune on the Church, and he doesn’t resent it even now. He

says that any religion is better than none, but that, for himself, he

just can’t believe any longer. Now what does all that mean?... I tell

you something is going to happen. God knows what! And I can’t get

Felsenburgh out of my head.... Father Franklin---”

“Yes?”

“Have you noticed how few great men we’ve got? It’s not like fifty years

ago, or even thirty. Then there were Mason, Selborne, Sherbrook, and

half-a-dozen others. There was Brightman, too, as Archbishop: and now!

Then the Communists, too. Braithwaite is dead fifteen years. Certainly

he was big enough; but he was always speaking of the future, not of the

present; and tell me what big man they have had since then! And now

there’s this new man, whom no one knows, who came forward in America a

few months ago, and whose name is in every one’s mouth. Very well,

then!”

Percy knitted his forehead.

“I am not sure that I understand,” he said.

Father Blackmore knocked his pipe out before answering.

“Well, this,” he said, standing up. “I can’t help thinking Felsenburgh

is going to do something. I don’t know what; it may be for us or against

us. But he is a Mason, remember that.... Well, well; I dare say I’m an

old fool. Good-night.”

“One moment, father,” said Percy slowly. “Do you mean--? Good Lord! What

do you mean?” He stopped, looking at the other.

The old priest stared back under his bushy eyebrows; it seemed to Percy

as if he, too, were afraid of something in spite of his easy talk; but

he made no sign.

* * * * *

Percy stood perfectly still a moment when the door was shut. Then he

moved across to his _prie-dieu_.

CHAPTER III

I

Old Mrs. Brand and Mabel were seated at a window of the new Admiralty

Offices in Trafalgar Square to see Oliver deliver his speech on the

fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Poor Laws Reform.

It was an inspiriting sight, this bright June morning, to see the crowds

gathering round Braithwaite’s statue. That politician, dead fifteen

years before, was represented in his famous attitude, with arms

outstretched and down dropped, his head up and one foot slightly

advanced, and to-day was decked, as was becoming more and more usual on

such occasions, in his Masonic insignia. It was he who had given

immense impetus to that secret movement by his declaration in the House

that the key of future progress and brotherhood of nations was in the

hands of the Order. It was through this alone that the false unity of

the Church with its fantastic spiritual fraternity could be

counteracted. St. Paul had been right, he declared, in his desire to

break down the partition-walls between nations, and wrong only in his

exaltation of Jesus Christ. Thus he had preluded his speech on the Poor

Law question, pointing to the true charity that existed among Masons

apart from religious motive, and appealing to the famous benefactions on

the Continent; and in the enthusiasm of the Bill’s success the Order had

received a great accession of members.

Old Mrs. Brand was in her best to-day, and looked out with considerable

excitement at the huge throng gathered to hear her son speak. A platform

was erected round the bronze statue at such a height that the statesman

appeared to be one of the speakers, though at a slightly higher

elevation, and this platform was hung with roses, surmounted by a

sounding-board, and set with a chair and table.

The whole square round about was paved with heads and resonant with

sound, the murmurs of thousands of voices, overpowered now and again by

the crash of brass and thunder of drums as the Benefit Societies and

democratic Guilds, each headed by a banner, deployed from North, South,

East and West, and converged towards the wide railed space about the

platform where room was reserved for them. The windows on every side

were packed with faces; tall stands were erected along the front of the

National Gallery and St. Martin’s Church, garden-beds of colour behind

the mute, white statues that faced outwards round the square; from

Braithwaite in front, past the Victorians--John Davidson, John Burns,

and the rest--round to Hampden and de Montfort towards the north. The

old column was gone, with its lions. Nelson had not been found

advantageous to the _Entente Cordiale_, nor the lions to the new art;

and in their place stretched a wide pavement broken by slopes of steps

that led up to the National Gallery.

Overhead the roofs showed crowded friezes of heads against the blue

summer sky. Not less than one hundred thousand persons, it was estimated

in the evening papers, were collected within sight and sound of the

platform by noon.

As the clocks began to tell the hour, two figures appeared from behind

the statue and came forward, and, in an instant, the murmurs of talk

rose into cheering.

Old Lord Pemberton came first, a grey-haired, upright man, whose father

had been active in denouncing the House of which he was a member on the

occasion of its fall over seventy years ago, and his son had succeeded

him worthily. This man was now a member of the Government, and sat for

Manchester (3); and it was he who was to be chairman on this auspicious

occasion. Behind him came Oliver, bareheaded and spruce, and even at

that distance his mother and wife could see his brisk movement, his

sudden smile and nod as his name emerged from the storm of sound that

surged round the platform. Lord Pemberton came forward, lifted his hand

and made a signal; and in a moment the thin cheering died under the

sudden roll of drums beneath that preluded the Masonic Hymn.

There was no doubt that these Londoners could sing. It was as if a giant

voice hummed the sonorous melody, rising to enthusiasm till the music of

massed bands followed it as a flag follows a flag-stick. The hymn was

one composed ten years before, and all England was familiar with it.

Old Mrs. Bland lifted the printed paper mechanically to her eyes, and

saw the words that she knew so well:

“_The Lord that dwells in earth and sea._” ...

She glanced down the verses, that from the Humanitarian point of view

had been composed with both skill and ardour. They had a religious ring;

the unintelligent Christian could sing them without a qualm; yet their

sense was plain enough--the old human creed that man was all. Even

Christ’s, words themselves were quoted. The kingdom of God, it was said,

lay within the human heart, and the greatest of all graces was Charity.

She glanced at Mabel, and saw that the girl was singing with all her

might, with her eyes fixed on her husband’s dark figure a hundred yards

away, and her soul pouring through them. So the mother, too, began to

move her lips in chorus with that vast volume of sound.

As the hymn died away, and before the cheering could begin again, old

Lord Pemberton was standing forward on the edge of the platform, and his

thin, metallic voice piped a sentence or two across the tinkling splash

of the fountains behind him. Then he stepped back, and Oliver came

forward.

* * * * *

It was too far for the two to hear what was said, but Mabel slipped a

paper, smiling tremulously, into the old lady’s hand, and herself bent

forward to listen.

Old Mrs. Brand looked at that, too, knowing that it was an analysis of

her son’s speech, and aware that she would not be able to hear his

words.

There was an exordium first, congratulating all who were present to do

honour to the great man who presided from his pedestal on the occasion

of this great anniversary. Then there came a retrospect, comparing the

old state of England with the present. Fifty years ago, the speaker

said, poverty was still a disgrace, now it was so no longer. It was in

the causes that led to poverty that the disgrace or the merit lay. Who

would not honour a man worn out in the service of his country, or

overcome at last by circumstances against which his efforts could not

prevail?... He enumerated the reforms passed fifty years before on this

very day, by which the nation once and for all declared the glory of

poverty and man’s sympathy with the unfortunate.

So he had told them he was to sing the praise of patient poverty and its

reward, and that, he supposed, together with a few periods on the reform

of the prison laws, would form the first half of his speech.

The second part was to be a panegyric of Braithwaite, treating him as

the Precursor of a movement that even now had begun.

Old Mrs. Brand leaned back in her seat, and looked about her.

The window where they sat had been reserved for them; two arm-chairs

filled the space, but immediately behind there were others, standing

very silent now, craning forward, watching, too, with parted lips: a

couple of women with an old man directly behind, and other faces visible

again behind them. Their obvious absorption made the old lady a little

ashamed of her distraction, and she turned resolutely once more to the

square.

Ah! he was working up now to his panegyric! The tiny dark figure was

back, a yard nearer the statue, and as she looked, his hand went up and

he wheeled, pointing, as a murmur of applause drowned for an instant the

minute, resonant voice. Then again he was forward, half crouching--for

he was a born actor--and a storm of laughter rippled round the throng of

heads. She heard an indrawn hiss behind her chair, and the next instant

an exclamation from Mabel.... What was that?

There was a sharp crack, and the tiny gesticulating figure staggered

back a step. The old man at the table was up in a moment, and

simultaneously a violent commotion bubbled and heaved like water about a

rock at a point in the crowd immediately outside the railed space where

the bands were massed, and directly opposite the front of the platform.

Mrs. Brand, bewildered and dazed, found herself standing up, clutching

the window rail, while the girl gripped her, crying out something she

could not understand. A great roaring filled the square, the heads

tossed this way and that, like corn under a squall of wind. Then Oliver

was forward again, pointing and crying out, for she could see his

gestures; and she sank back quickly, the blood racing through her old

veins, and her heart hammering at the base of her throat.

“My dear, my dear, what is it?” she sobbed.

But Mabel was up, too, staring out at her husband; and a quick babble of

talk and exclamations from behind made itself audible in spite of the

roaring tumult of the square.

II

Oliver told them the explanation of the whole affair that evening at

home, leaning back in his chair, with one arm bandaged and in a sling.

They had not been able to get near him at the time; the excitement in

the square had been too fierce; but a messenger had come to his wife

with the news that her husband was only slightly wounded, and was in the

hands of the doctors.

“He was a Catholic,” explained the drawn-faced Oliver. “He must have

come ready, for his repeater was found loaded. Well, there was no chance

for a priest this time.”

Mabel nodded slowly: she had read of the man’s fate on the placards.

“He was killed--trampled and strangled instantly,” said Oliver. “I did

what I could: you saw me. But--well, I dare say it was more merciful.”

“But you did what you could, my dear?” said the old lady, anxiously,

from her corner.

“I called out to them, mother, but they wouldn’t hear me.”

Mabel leaned forward---

“Oliver, I know this sounds stupid of me; but--but I wish they had not

killed him.”

Oliver smiled at her. He knew this tender trait in her.

“It would have been more perfect if they had not,” she said. Then she

broke off and sat back.

“Why did he shoot just then?” she asked.

Oliver turned his eyes for an instant towards his mother, but she was

knitting tranquilly.

Then he answered with a curious deliberateness.

“I said that Braithwaite had done more for the world by one speech than

Jesus and all His saints put together.” He was aware that the

knitting-needles stopped for a second; then they went on again as

before.

“But he must have meant to do it anyhow,” continued Oliver.

“How do they know he was a Catholic?” asked the girl again.

“There was a rosary on him; and then he just had time to call on his

God.”

“And nothing more is known?”

“Nothing more. He was well dressed, though.”

Oliver leaned back a little wearily and closed his eyes; his arm still

throbbed intolerably. But he was very happy at heart. It was true that

he had been wounded by a fanatic, but he was not sorry to bear pain in

such a cause, and it was obvious that the sympathy of England was with

him. Mr. Phillips even now was busy in the next room, answering the

telegrams that poured in every moment. Caldecott, the Prime Minister,

Maxwell, Snowford and a dozen others had wired instantly their

congratulations, and from every part of England streamed in message

after message. It was an immense stroke for the Communists; their

spokesman had been assaulted during the discharge of his duty, speaking

in defence of his principles; it was an incalculable gain for them, and

loss for the Individualists, that confessors were not all on one side

after all. The huge electric placards over London had winked out the

facts in Esperanto as Oliver stepped into the train at twilight.

“_Oliver Brand wounded.... Catholic assailant.... Indignation of the

country.... Well-deserved fate of assassin_.”

He was pleased, too, that he honestly had done his best to save the man.

Even in that moment of sudden and acute pain he had cried out for a fair

trial; but he had been too late. He had seen the starting eyes roll up

in the crimson face, and the horrid grin come and go as the hands had

clutched and torn at his throat. Then the face had vanished and a heavy

trampling began where it had disappeared. Oh! there was some passion and

loyalty left in England!

His mother got up presently and went out, still without a word; and

Mabel turned to him, laying a hand on his knee.

“Are you too tired to talk, my dear?”

He opened his eyes.

“Of course not, my darling. What is it?”

“What do you think will be the effect?”

He raised himself a little, looking out as usual through the darkening

windows on to that astonishing view. Everywhere now lights were

glowing, a sea of mellow moons just above the houses, and above the

mysterious heavy blue of a summer evening.

“The effect?” he said. “It can be nothing but good. It was time that

something happened. My dear, I feel very downcast sometimes, as you

know. Well, I do not think I shall be again. I have been afraid

sometimes that we were losing all our spirit, and that the old Tories

were partly right when they prophesied what Communism would do. But

after this---”

“Well?”

“Well; we have shown that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick

of time, too, just at the crisis. I don’t want to exaggerate; it is only

a scratch--but it was so deliberate, and--and so dramatic. The poor

devil could not have chosen a worse moment. People won’t forget it.”

Mabel’s eyes shone with pleasure.

“You poor dear!” she said. “Are you in pain?”

“Not much. Besides, Christ! what do I care? If only this infernal

Eastern affair would end!”

He knew he was feverish and irritable, and made a great effort to drive

it down.

“Oh, my dear!” he went on, flushed a little. “If they would not be such

heavy fools: they don’t understand; they don’t understand.”

“Yes, Oliver?”

“They don’t understand what a glorious thing it all is: Humanity, Life,

Truth at last, and the death of Folly! But haven’t I told them a hundred

times?”

She looked at him with kindling eyes. She loved to see him like this,

his confident, flushed face, the enthusiasm in his blue eyes; and the

knowledge of his pain pricked her feeling with passion. She bent forward

and kissed him suddenly.

“My dear, I am so proud of you. Oh, Oliver!”

He said nothing; but she could see what she loved to see, that response

to her own heart; and so they sat in silence while the sky darkened yet

more, and the click of the writer in the next room told them that the

world was alive and that they had a share in its affairs.

Oliver stirred presently.

“Did you notice anything just now, sweetheart--when I said that about

Jesus Christ?”

“She stopped knitting for a moment,” said the girl.

He nodded.

“You saw that too, then.... Mabel, do you think she is falling back?”

“Oh! she is getting old,” said the girl lightly. “Of course she looks

back a little.”

“But you don’t think--it would be too awful!”

She shook her head.

“No, no, my dear; you’re excited and tired. It’s just a little

sentiment.... Oliver, I don’t think I would say that kind of thing

before her.”

“But she hears it everywhere now.”

“No, she doesn’t. Remember she hardly ever goes out. Besides, she hates

it. After all, she was brought up a Catholic.”

Oliver nodded, and lay back again, looking dreamily out.

“Isn’t it astonishing the way in which suggestion lasts? She can’t get

it out of her head, even after fifty years. Well, watch her, won’t

you?... By the way ...”

“Yes?”

“There’s a little more news from the East. They say Felsenburgh’s

running the whole thing now. The Empire is sending him everywhere--

Tobolsk, Benares, Yakutsk--everywhere; and he’s been to Australia.”

Mabel sat up briskly.

“Isn’t that very hopeful?”

“I suppose so. There’s no doubt that the Sufis are winning; but for how

long is another question. Besides, the troops don’t disperse.”

“And Europe?”

“Europe is arming as fast as possible. I hear we are to meet the Powers

next week at Paris. I must go.”

“Your arm, my dear?”

“My arm must get well. It will have to go with me, anyhow.”

“Tell me some more.”

“There is no more. But it is just as certain as it can be that this is

the crisis. If the East can be persuaded to hold its hand now, it will

never be likely to raise it again. It will mean free trade all over the

world, I suppose, and all that kind of thing. But if not---”

“Well?”

“If not, there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even

imagined. The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West

will be simply wiped out. These new Benninschein explosives will make

certain of that.”

“But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them?”

“Absolutely. Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West;

then he died, luckily for him.”

Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply

refused to grasp it. A duel of East and West under these new conditions

was an unthinkable thing. There had been no European war within living

memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old

conditions. Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed

with a single shell. The new conditions were unimaginable. Military

experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital

points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no

precedents with which to compare it. It was as if archers disputed as to

the results of cordite. Only one thing was certain--that the East had

every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much

again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be

drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to England.

But imagination simply refused to speak. The daily papers had a short,

careful leading article every day, founded upon the scraps of news that

stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world;

Felsenburgh’s name appeared more frequently than ever: otherwise there

seemed to be a kind of hush. Nothing suffered very much; trade went on;

European stocks were not appreciably lower than usual; men still built

houses, married wives, begat sons and daughters, did their business and

went to the theatre, for the mere reason that there was no good in

anything else. They could neither save nor precipitate the situation; it

was on too large a scale. Occasionally people went mad--people who had

succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of

reality could be obtained; and there was a diffused atmosphere of

tenseness. But that was all. Not many speeches were made on the subject;

it had been found inadvisable. After all, there was nothing to do but to

wait.

III

Mabel remembered her husband’s advice to watch, and for a few days did

her best. But there was nothing that alarmed her. The old lady was a

little quiet, perhaps, but went about her minute affairs as usual. She

asked the girl to read to her sometimes, and listened unblenching to

whatever was offered her; she attended in the kitchen daily, organised

varieties of food, and appeared interested in all that concerned her

son. She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the

swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down

the little path towards the junction. He would be gone three days, he

said.

It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel,

running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her

rather flushed and agitated in her chair.

“It is nothing, my dear,” said the old lady tremulously; and she added

the description of a symptom or two.

Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.

She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her

presence in the house a quiet sort of delight. The effect of her upon

the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body. The old lady was so

tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so

reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without

resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to

watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel

believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of

Life which informed the world. She found less difficulty in

contemplating the end of a vigorous soul, for in that case she imagined

a kind of energetic rush of force back into the origin of things; but in

this peaceful old lady there was so little energy; her whole point, so

to speak, lay in the delicate little fabric of personality, built out of

fragile things into an entity far more significant than the sum of its

component parts: the death of a flower, reflected Mabel, is sadder than

the death of a lion; the breaking of a piece of china more irreparable

than the ruin of a palace.

“It is syncope,” said the doctor when he came in. “She may die at any

time; she may live ten years.”

“There is no need to telegraph for Mr. Brand?”

He made a little deprecating movement with his hands.

“It is not certain that she will die--it is not imminent?” she asked.

“No, no; she may live ten years, I said.”

He added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector,

and went away.

* * * * *

The old lady was lying quietly in bed, when the girl went up, and put

out a wrinkled hand.

“Well, my dear?” she asked.

“It is just a little weakness, mother. You must lie quiet and do

nothing. Shall I read to you?”

“No, my dear; I will think a little.”

It was no part of Mabel’s idea to duty to tell her that she was in

danger, for there was no past to set straight, no Judge to be

confronted. Death was an ending, not a beginning. It was a peaceful

Gospel; at least, it became peaceful as soon as the end had come.

So the girl went downstairs once more, with a quiet little ache at her

heart that refused to be still.

What a strange and beautiful thing death was, she told herself--this

resolution of a chord that had hung suspended for thirty, fifty or

seventy years--back again into the stillness of the huge Instrument that

was all in all to itself. Those same notes would be struck again, were

being struck again even now all over the world, though with an infinite

delicacy of difference in the touch; but that particular emotion was

gone: it was foolish to think that it was sounding eternally elsewhere,

for there was no elsewhere. She, too, herself would cease one day, let

her see to it that the tone was pure and lovely.

* * * * *

Mr. Phillips arrived the next morning as usual, just as Mabel had left

the old lady’s room, and asked news of her.

“She is a little better, I think,” said Mabel. “She must be very quiet

all day.”

The secretary bowed and turned aside into Oliver’s room, where a heap of

letters lay to be answered.

A couple of hours later, as Mabel went upstairs once more, she met Mr.

Phillips coming down. He looked a little flushed under his sallow skin.

“Mrs. Brand sent for me,” he said. “She wished to know whether Mr.

Oliver would be back to-night.”

“He will, will he not? You have not heard?”

“Mr. Brand said he would be here for a late dinner. He will reach London

at nineteen.”

“And is there any other news?”

He compressed his lips.

“There are rumours,” he said. “Mr. Brand wired to me an hour ago.”

He seemed moved at something, and Mabel looked at him in astonishment.

“It is not Eastern news?” she asked.

His eyebrows wrinkled a little.

“You must forgive me, Mrs. Brand,” he said. “I am not at liberty to say

anything.”

She was not offended, for she trusted her husband too well; but she went

on into the sick-room with her heart beating.

The old lady, too, seemed excited. She lay in bed with a clear flush in

her white cheeks, and hardly smiled at all to the girl’s greeting.

“Well, you have seen Mr. Phillips, then?” said Mabel.

Old Mrs. Brand looked at her sharply an instant, but said nothing.

“Don’t excite yourself, mother. Oliver will be back to-night.”

The old lady drew a long breath.

“Don’t trouble about me, my dear,” she said. “I shall do very well now.

He will be back to dinner, will he not?”

“If the volor is not late. Now, mother, are you ready for breakfast?”

* * * * *

Mabel passed an afternoon of considerable agitation. It was certain that

something had happened. The secretary, who breakfasted with her in the

parlour looking on to the garden, had appeared strangely excited. He had

told her that he would be away the rest of the day: Mr. Oliver had given

him his instructions. He had refrained from all discussion of the

Eastern question, and he had given her no news of the Paris Convention;

he only repeated that Mr. Oliver would be back that night. Then he had

gone of in a hurry half-an-hour later.

The old lady seemed asleep when the girl went up afterwards, and Mabel

did not like to disturb her. Neither did she like to leave the house; so

she walked by herself in the garden, thinking and hoping and fearing,

till the long shadow lay across the path, and the tumbled platform of

roofs was bathed in a dusty green haze from the west.

As she came in she took up the evening paper, but there was no news

there except to the effect that the Convention would close that

afternoon.

* * * * *

Twenty o’clock came, but there was no sign of Oliver. The Paris volor

should have arrived an hour before, but Mabel, staring out into the

darkening heavens had seen the stars come out like jewels one by one,

but no slender winged fish pass overhead. Of course she might have

missed it; there was no depending on its exact course; but she had seen

it a hundred times before, and wondered unreasonably why she had not

seen it now. But she would not sit down to dinner, and paced up and

down in her white dress, turning again and again to the window,

listening to the soft rush of the trains, the faint hoots from the

track, and the musical chords from the junction a mile away. The lights

were up by now, and the vast sweep of the towns looked like fairyland

between the earthly light and the heavenly darkness. Why did not Oliver

come, or at least let her know why he did not?

Once she went upstairs, miserably anxious herself, to reassure the old

lady, and found her again very drowsy.

“He is not come,” she said. “I dare say he may be kept in Paris.”

The old face on the pillow nodded and murmured, and Mabel went down

again. It was now an hour after dinner-time.

Oh! there were a hundred things that might have kept him. He had often

been later than this: he might have missed the volor he meant to catch;

the Convention might have been prolonged; he might be exhausted, and

think it better to sleep in Paris after all, and have forgotten to wire.

He might even have wired to Mr. Phillips, and the secretary have

forgotten to pass on the message.

She went at last, hopelessly, to the telephone, and looked at it. There

it was, that round silent mouth, that little row of labelled buttons.

She half decided to touch them one by one, and inquire whether anything

had been heard of her husband: there was his club, his office in

Whitehall, Mr. Phillips’s house, Parliament-house, and the rest. But she

hesitated, telling herself to be patient. Oliver hated interference, and

he would surely soon remember and relieve her anxiety.

Then, even as she turned away, the bell rang sharply, and a white label

flashed into sight.--WHITEHALL.

She pressed the corresponding button, and, her hand shaking so much that

she could scarcely hold the receiver to her ear, she listened.

“Who is there?”

Her heart leaped at the sound of her husband’s voice, tiny and minute

across the miles of wire.

“I--Mabel,” she said. “Alone here.”

“Oh! Mabel. Very well. I am back: all is well. Now listen. Can you

hear?”

“Yes, yes.”

“The best has happened. It is all over in the East. Felsenburgh has done

it. Now listen. I cannot come home to-night. It will be announced in

Paul’s House in two hours from now. We are communicating with the Press.

Come up here to me at once. You must be present.... Can you hear?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Come then at once. It will be the greatest thing in history. Tell no

one. Come before the rush begins. In half-an-hour the way will be

stopped.”

“Oliver.”

“Yes? Quick.”

“Mother is ill. Shall I leave her?”

“How ill?”

“Oh, no immediate danger. The doctor has seen her.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Yes; come then. We will go back to-night anyhow, then. Tell her we

shall be late.”

“Very well.”

“... Yes, you must come. Felsenburgh will be there.”

CHAPTER IV

I

On the same afternoon Percy received a visitor.

There was nothing exceptional about him; and Percy, as he came

downstairs in his walking-dress and looked at him in the light from the

tall parlour-window, came to no conclusion at all as to his business and

person, except that he was not a Catholic.

“You wished to see me,” said the priest, indicating a chair.

“I fear I must not stop long.”

“I shall not keep you long,” said the stranger eagerly. “My business is

done in five minutes.”

Percy waited with his eyes cast down.

“A--a certain person has sent me to you. She was a Catholic once; she

wishes to return to the Church.”

Percy made a little movement with his head. It was a message he did not

very often receive in these days.

“You will come, sir, will you not? You will promise me?”

The man seemed greatly agitated; his sallow face showed a little shining

with sweat, and his eyes were piteous.

“Of course I will come,” said Percy, smiling.

“Yes, sir; but you do not know who she is. It--it would make a great

stir, sir, if it was known. It must not be known, sir; you will promise

me that, too?”

“I must not make any promise of that kind,” said the priest gently. “I

do not know the circumstances yet.”

The stranger licked his lips nervously.

“Well, sir,” he said hastily, “you will say nothing till you have seen

her? You can promise me that.”

“Oh! certainly,” said the priest.

“Well, sir, you had better not know my name. It--it may make it easier

for you and for me. And--and, if you please, sir, the lady is ill; you

must come to-day, if you please, but not until the evening. Will

twenty-two o’clock be convenient, sir?”

“Where is it?” asked Percy abruptly.

“It--it is near Croydon junction. I will write down the address

presently. And you will not come until twenty-two o’clock, sir?”

“Why not now?”

“Because the--the others may be there. They will be away then; I know

that.”

This was rather suspicious, Percy thought: discreditable plots had been

known before. But he could not refuse outright.

“Why does she not send for her parish-priest?” he asked.

“She she does not know who he is, sir; she saw you once in the

Cathedral, sir, and asked you for your name. Do you remember, sir?--an

old lady?”

Percy did dimly remember something of the kind a month or two before;

but he could not be certain, and said so.

“Well, sir, you will come, will you not?”

“I must communicate with Father Dolan,” said the priest. “If he gives me

permission---”

“If you please, sir, Father--Father Dolan must not know her name. You

will not tell him?”

“I do not know it myself yet,” said the priest, smiling.

The stranger sat back abruptly at that, and his face worked.

“Well, sir, let me tell you this first. This old lady’s son is my

employer, and a very prominent Communist. She lives with him and his

wife. The other two will be away to-night. That is why I am asking you

all this. And now, you will come, sir?”

Percy looked at him steadily for a moment or two. Certainly, if this was

a conspiracy, the conspirators were feeble folk. Then he answered:

“I will come, sir; I promise. Now the name.”

The stranger again licked his lips nervously, and glanced timidly from

side to side. Then he seemed to gather his resolution; he leaned forward

and whispered sharply.

“The old lady’s name is Brand, sir--the mother of Mr. Oliver Brand.”

For a moment Percy was bewildered. It was too extraordinary to be true.

He knew Mr. Oliver Brand’s name only too well; it was he who, by God’s

permission, was doing more in England at this moment against the

Catholic cause than any other man alive; and it was he whom the

Trafalgar Square incident had raised into such eminent popularity. And

now, here was his mother---

He turned fiercely upon the man.

“I do not know what you are, sir--whether you believe in God or not; but

will you swear to me on your religion and your honour that all this is

true?”

The timid eyes met his, and wavered; but it was the wavering of

weakness, not of treachery.

“I--I swear it, sir; by God Almighty.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

The man shook his head.

“But I believe in God,” he said. “At least, I think so.”

Percy leaned back, trying to realise exactly what it all meant. There

was no triumph in his mind--that kind of emotion was not his weakness;

there was fear of a kind, excitement, bewilderment, and under all a

satisfaction that God’s grace was so sovereign. If it could reach this

woman, who could be too far removed for it to take effect? Presently he

noticed the other looking at him anxiously.

“You are afraid, sir? You are not going back from your promise?”

That dispersed the cloud a little, and Percy smiled.

“Oh! no,” he said. “I will be there at twenty-two o’clock. ... Is death

imminent?”

“No, sir; it is syncope. She is recovered a little this morning.”

The priest passed his hand over his eyes and stood up.

“Well, I will be there,” he said. “Shall you be there, sir?”

The other shook his head, standing up too.

“I must be with Mr. Brand, sir; there is to be a meeting to-night; but I

must not speak of that.... No, sir; ask for Mrs. Brand, and say that she

is expecting you. They will take you upstairs at once.”

“I must not say I am a priest, I suppose?”

“No, sir; if you please.”

He drew out a pocket-book, scribbled in it a moment, tore out the sheet,

and handed it to the priest.

“The address, sir. Will you kindly destroy that when you have copied it?

I--I do not wish to lose my place, sir, if it can be helped.”

Percy stood twisting the paper in his fingers a moment.

“Why are you not a Catholic yourself?” he asked.

The man shook his head mutely. Then he took up his hat, and went towards

the door.

* * * * *

Percy passed a very emotional afternoon.

For the last month or two little had happened to encourage him. He had

been obliged to report half-a-dozen more significant secessions, and

hardly a conversion of any kind. There was no doubt at all that the tide

was setting steadily against the Church. The mad act in Trafalgar

Square, too, had done incalculable harm last week: men were saying more

than ever, and the papers storming, that the Church’s reliance on the

supernatural was belied by every one of her public acts. “Scratch a

Catholic and find an assassin” had been the text of a leading article in

the _New People_, and Percy himself was dismayed at the folly of the

attempt. It was true that the Archbishop had formally repudiated both

the act and the motive from the Cathedral pulpit, but that too had only

served as an opportunity hastily taken up by the principal papers, to

recall the continual policy of the Church to avail herself of violence

while she repudiated the violent. The horrible death of the man had in

no way appeased popular indignation; there were not even wanting

suggestions that the man had been seen coming out of Archbishop’s House

an hour before the attempt at assassination had taken place.

And now here, with dramatic swiftness, had come a message that the

hero’s own mother desired reconciliation with the Church that had

attempted to murder her son.

* * * * *

Again and again that afternoon, as Percy sped northwards on his visit to

a priest in Worcester, and southwards once more as the lights began to

shine towards evening, he wondered whether this were not a plot after

all--some kind of retaliation, an attempt to trap him. Yet he had

promised to say nothing, and to go.

He finished his daily letter after dinner as usual, with a curious sense

of fatality; addressed and stamped it. Then he went downstairs, in his

walking-dress, to Father Blackmore’s room.

“Will you hear my confession, father?” he said abruptly.

II

Victoria Station, still named after the great nineteenth-century Queen,

was neither more nor less busy than usual as he came into it

half-an-hour later. The vast platform, sunk now nearly two hundred feet

below the ground level, showed the double crowd of passengers entering

and leaving town. Those on the extreme left, towards whom Percy began to

descend in the open glazed lift, were by far the most numerous, and the

stream at the lift-entrance made it necessary for him to move slowly.

He arrived at last, walking in the soft light on the noiseless ribbed

rubber, and stood by the door of the long car that ran straight through

to the Junction. It was the last of a series of a dozen or more, each of

which slid off minute by minute. Then, still watching the endless

movement of the lifts ascending and descending between the entrances of

the upper end of the station, he stepped in and sat down.

He felt quiet now that he had actually started. He had made his

confession, just in order to make certain of his own soul, though

scarcely expecting any definite danger, and sat now, his grey suit and

straw hat in no way distinguishing him as a priest (for a general leave

was given by the authorities to dress so for any adequate reason). Since

the case was not imminent, he had not brought stocks or pyx--Father

Dolan had wired to him that he might fetch them if he wished from St.

Joseph’s, near the Junction. He had only the violet thread in his

pocket, such as was customary for sick calls.

He was sliding along peaceably enough, fixing his eyes on the empty seat

opposite, and trying to preserve complete collectedness when the car

abruptly stopped. He looked out, astonished, and saw by the white

enamelled walks twenty feet from the window that they were already in

the tunnel. The stoppage might arise from many causes, and he was not

greatly excited, nor did it seem that others in the carriage took it

very seriously; he could hear, after a moment’s silence, the talking

recommence beyond the partition.

Then there came, echoed by the walls, the sound of shouting from far

away, mingled with hoots and chords; it grew louder. The talking in the

carriage stopped. He heard a window thrown up, and the next instant a

car tore past, going back to the station although on the down line. This

must be looked into, thought Percy: something certainly was happening;

so he got up and went across the empty compartment to the further

window. Again came the crying of voices, again the signals, and once

more a car whirled past, followed almost immediately by another. There

was a jerk--a smooth movement. Percy staggered and fell into a seat, as

the carriage in which he was seated itself began to move backwards.

There was a clamour now in the next compartment, and Percy made his way

there through the door, only to find half-a-dozen men with their heads

thrust from the windows, who paid absolutely no attention to his

inquiries. So he stood there, aware that they knew no more than himself,

waiting for an explanation from some one. It was disgraceful, he told

himself, that any misadventure should so disorganise the line.

Twice the car stopped; each time it moved on again after a hoot or two,

and at last drew up at the platform whence it had started, although a

hundred yards further out.

Ah! there was no doubt that something had happened! The instant he

opened the door a great roar met his ears, and as he sprang on to the

platform and looked up at the end of the station, he began to

understand.

* * * * *

From right to left of the huge interior, across the platforms, swelling

every instant, surged an enormous swaying, roaring crowd. The flight of

steps, twenty yards broad, used only in cases of emergency, resembled a

gigantic black cataract nearly two hundred feet in height. Each car as

it drew up discharged more and more men and women, who ran like ants

towards the assembly of their fellows. The noise was indescribable, the

shouting of men, the screaming of women, the clang and hoot of the huge

machines, and three or four times the brazen cry of a trumpet, as an

emergency door was flung open overhead, and a small swirl of crowd

poured through it towards the streets beyond. But after one look Percy

looked no more at the people; for there, high up beneath the clock, on

the Government signal board, flared out monstrous letters of fire,

telling in Esperanto and English, the message for which England had

grown sick. He read it a dozen times before he moved, staring, as at a

supernatural sight which might denote the triumph of either heaven or

hell.

“EASTERN CONVENTION DISPERSED.

PEACE, NOT WAR.

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD ESTABLISHED.

FELSENBURGH IN LONDON TO-NIGHT.”

* * * * *

III

It was not until nearly two hours later that Percy was standing at the

house beyond the Junction.

He had argued, expostulated, threatened, but the officials were like

men possessed. Half of them had disappeared in the rush to the City, for

it had leaked out, in spite of the Government’s precautions, that Paul’s

House, known once as St. Paul’s Cathedral, was to be the scene of

Felsenburgh’s reception. The others seemed demented; one man on the

platform had dropped dead from nervous exhaustion, but no one appeared

to care; and the body lay huddled beneath a seat. Again and again Percy

had been swept away by a rush, as he struggled from platform to platform

in his search for a car that would take him to Croydon. It seemed that

there was none to be had, and the useless carriages collected like

drift-wood between the platforms, as others whirled up from the country

bringing loads of frantic, delirious men, who vanished like smoke from

the white rubber-boards. The platforms were continually crowded, and as

continually emptied, and it was not until half-an-hour before midnight

that the block began to move outwards again.

Well, he was here at last, dishevelled, hatless and exhausted, looking

up at the dark windows.

He scarcely knew what he thought of the whole matter. War, of course,

was terrible. And such a war as this would have been too terrible for

the imagination to visualise; but to the priest’s mind there were other

things even worse. What of universal peace--peace, that is to say,

established by others than Christ’s method? Or was God behind even this?

The questions were hopeless.

Felsenburgh--it was he then who had done this thing--this thing

undoubtedly greater than any secular event hitherto known in

civilisation. What manner of man was he? What was his character, his

motive, his method? How would he use his success?... So the points flew

before him like a stream of sparks, each, it might be, harmless; each,

equally, capable of setting a world on fire. Meanwhile here was an old

woman who desired to be reconciled with God before she died....

* * * * *

He touched the button again, three or four times, and waited. Then a

light sprang out overhead, and he knew that he was heard.

“I was sent for,” he exclaimed to the bewildered maid. “I should have

been here at twenty-two: I was prevented by the rush.”

She babbled out a question at him.

“Yes, it is true, I believe,” he said. “It is peace, not war. Kindly

take me upstairs.”

He went through the hall with a curious sense of guilt. This was Brand’s

house then--that vivid orator, so bitterly eloquent against God; and

here was he, a priest, slinking in under cover of night. Well, well, it

was not of his appointment.

At the door of an upstairs room the maid turned to him.

“A doctor, sir?” she said.

“That is my affair,” said Percy briefly, and opened the door.

* * * * *

A little wailing cry broke from the corner, before he had time to close

the door again.

“Oh! thank God! I thought He had forgotten me. You are a priest,

father?”

“I am a priest. Do you not remember seeing me in the Cathedral?”

“Yes, yes, sir; I saw you praying, father. Oh! thank God, thank God!”

Percy stood looking down at her a moment, seeing her flushed old face in

the nightcap, her bright sunken eyes and her tremulous hands. Yes; this

was genuine enough.

“Now, my child,” he said, “tell me.”

“My confession, father.”

Percy drew out the purple thread, slipped it over his shoulders, and sat

down by the bed.

* * * * *

But she would not let him go for a while after that.

“Tell me, father. When will you bring me Holy Communion?”

He hesitated.

“I understand that Mr. Brand and his wife know nothing of all this?”

“No, father.”

“Tell me, are you very ill?”

“I don’t know, father. They will not tell me. I thought I was gone last

night.”

“When would you wish me to bring you Holy Communion? I will do as you

say.”

“Shall I send to you in a day or two? Father, ought I to tell him?”

“You are not obliged.”

“I will if I ought.”

“Well, think about it, and let me know.... You have heard what has

happened?”

She nodded, but almost uninterestedly; and Percy was conscious of a tiny

prick of compunction at his own heart. After all, the reconciling of a

soul to God was a greater thing than the reconciling of East to West.

“It may make a difference to Mr. Brand,” he said. “He will be a great

man, now, you know.”

She still looked at him in silence, smiling a little. Percy was

astonished at the youthfulness of that old face. Then her face changed.

“Father, I must not keep you; but tell me this--Who is this man?”

“Felsenburgh?”

“Yes.”

“No one knows. We shall know more to-morrow. He is in town to-night.”

She looked so strange that Percy for an instant thought it was a

seizure. Her face seemed to fall away in a kind of emotion, half

cunning, half fear.

“Well, my child?”

“Father, I am a little afraid when I think of that man. He cannot harm

me, can he? I am safe now? I am a Catholic--?”

“My child, of course you are safe. What is the matter? How can this man

injure you?”

But the look of terror was still there, and Percy came a step nearer.

“You must not give way to fancies,” he said. “Just commit yourself to

our Blessed Lord. This man can do you no harm.”

He was speaking now as to a child; but it was of no use. Her old mouth

was still sucked in, and her eyes wandered past him into the gloom of

the room behind.

“My child, tell me what is the matter. What do you know of Felsenburgh?

You have been dreaming.”

She nodded suddenly and energetically, and Percy for the first time felt

his heart give a little leap of apprehension. Was this old woman out of

her mind, then? Or why was it that that name seemed to him sinister?

Then he remembered that Father Blackmore had once talked like this. He

made an effort, and sat down once more.

“Now tell me plainly,” he said. “You have been dreaming. What have you

dreamt?”

She raised herself a little in bed, again glancing round the room; then

she put out her old ringed hand for one of his, and he gave it,

wondering.

“The door is shut, father? There is no one listening?”

“No, no, my child. Why are you trembling? You must not be

superstitious.”

“Father, I will tell you. Dreams are nonsense, are they not? Well, at

least, this is what I dreamt.

“I was somewhere in a great house; I do not know where it was. It was a

house I have never seen. It was one of the old houses, and it was very

dark. I was a child, I thought, and I was ... I was afraid of something.

The passages were all dark, and I went crying in the dark, looking for a

light, and there was none. Then I heard a voice talking, a great way

off. Father---”

Her hand gripped his more tightly, and again her eyes went round the

room.

With great difficulty Percy repressed a sigh. Yet he dared not leave her

just now. The house was very still; only from outside now and again

sounded the clang of the cars, as they sped countrywards again from the

congested town, and once the sound of great shouting. He wondered what

time it was.

“Had you better tell me now?” he asked, still talking with a patient

simplicity. “What time will they be back?”

“Not yet,” she whispered. “Mabel said not till two o’clock. What time

is it now, father?”

He pulled out his watch with his disengaged hand.

“It is not yet one,” he said.

“Very well, listen, father.... I was in this house; and I heard that

talking; and I ran along the passages, till I saw light below a door;

and then I stopped.... Nearer, father.”

Percy was a little awed in spite of himself. Her voice had suddenly

dropped to a whisper, and her old eyes seemed to hold him strangely.

“I stopped, father; I dared not go in. I could hear the talking, and I

could see the light; and I dared not go in. Father, it was Felsenburgh

in that room.”

From beneath came the sudden snap of a door; then the sound of

footsteps. Percy turned his head abruptly, and at the same moment heard

a swift indrawn breath from the old woman.

“Hush!” he said. “Who is that?”

Two voices were talking in the hall below now, and at the sound the old

woman relaxed her hold.

“I--I thought it to be him,” she murmured.

Percy stood up; he could see that she did not understand the situation.

“Yes, my child,” he said quietly, “but who is it?”

“My son and his wife,” she said; then her face changed once more.

“Why--why, father---”

Her voice died in her throat, as a step vibrated outside. For a moment

there was complete silence; then a whisper, plainly audible, in a girl’s

voice.

“Why, her light is burning. Come in, Oliver, but softly.”

Then the handle turned.

CHAPTER V

I

There was an exclamation, then silence, as a tall, beautiful girl with

flushed face and shining grey eyes came forward and stopped, followed by

a man whom Percy knew at once from his pictures. A little whimpering

sounded from the bed, and the priest lifted his hand instinctively to

silence it.

“Why,” said Mabel; and then stared at the man with the young face and

the white hair.

Oliver opened his lips and closed them again. He, too, had a strange

excitement in his face. Then he spoke.

“Who is this?” he said deliberately.

“Oliver,” cried the girl, turning to him abruptly, “this is the priest I

saw---”

“A priest!” said the other, and came forward a step. “Why, I thought---”

Percy drew a breath to steady that maddening vibration in his throat.

“Yes, I am a priest,” he said.

Again the whimpering broke out from the bed; and Percy, half turning

again to silence it, saw the girl mechanically loosen the clasp of the

thin dust cloak over her white dress.

“You sent for him, mother?” snapped the man, with a tremble in his

voice, and with a sudden jerk forward of his whole body. But the girl

put out her hand.

“Quietly, my dear,” she said. “Now, sir---”

“Yes, I am a priest,” said Percy again, strung up now to a desperate

resistance of will, hardly knowing what he said.

“And you come to my house!” exclaimed the man. He came a step nearer,

and half recoiled. “You swear you are a priest?” he said. “You have been

here all this evening?”

“Since midnight.”

“And you are not---” he stopped again.

Mabel stepped straight between them.

“Oliver,” she said, still with that air of suppressed excitement, “we

must not have a scene here. The poor dear is too ill. Will you come

downstairs, sir?”

Percy took a step towards the door, and Oliver moved slightly aside.

Then the priest stopped, turned and lifted his hand.

“God bless you!” he said simply, to the muttering figure in the bed.

Then he went out, and waited outside the door.

He could hear a low talking within; then a compassionate murmur from the

girl’s voice; then Oliver was beside him, trembling all over, as white

as ashes, and made a silent gesture as he went past him down the stairs.

* * * * *

The whole thing seemed to Percy like some incredible dream; it was all

so unexpected, so untrue to life. He felt conscious of an enormous shame

at the sordidness of the affair, and at the same time of a kind of

hopeless recklessness. The worst had happened and the best--that was his

sole comfort.

Oliver pushed a door open, touched a button, and went through into the

suddenly lit room, followed by Percy. Still in silence, he pointed to a

chair, Percy sat down, and Oliver stood before the fireplace, his hands

deep in the pockets of his jacket, slightly turned away.

Percy’s concentrated senses became aware of every detail of the

room--the deep springy green carpet, smooth under his feet, the straight

hanging thin silk curtains, the half-dozen low tables with a wealth of

flowers upon them, and the books that lined the walls. The whole room

was heavy with the scent of roses, although the windows were wide, and

the night-breeze stirred the curtains continually. It was a woman’s

room, he told himself. Then he looked at the man’s figure, lithe, tense,

upright; the dark grey suit not unlike his own, the beautiful curve of

the jaw, the clear pale complexion, the thin nose, the protruding curve

of idealism over the eyes, and the dark hair. It was a poet’s face, he

told himself, and the whole personality was a living and vivid one. Then

he turned a little and rose as the door opened, and Mabel came in,

closing it behind her.

She came straight across to her husband, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Sit down, my dear,” she said. “We must talk a little. Please sit down,

sir.”

The three sat down, Percy on one side, and the husband and wife on a

straight-backed settle opposite.

The girl began again.

“This must be arranged at once,” she said, “but we must have no tragedy.

Oliver, do you understand? You must not make a scene. Leave this to me.”

She spoke with a curious gaiety; and Percy to his astonishment saw that

she was quite sincere: there was not the hint of cynicism.

“Oliver, my dear,” she said again, “don’t mouth like that! It is all

perfectly right. I am going to manage this.”

Percy saw a venomous look directed at him by the man; the girl saw it

too, moving her strong humorous eyes from one to the other. She put her

hand on his knee.

“Oliver, attend! Don’t look at this gentleman so bitterly. He has done

no harm.”

“No harm!” whispered the other.

“No--no harm in the world. What does it matter what that poor dear

upstairs thinks? Now, sir, would you mind telling us why you came here?”

Percy drew another breath. He had not expected this line.

“I came here to receive Mrs. Brand back into the Church,” he said.

“And you have done so?”

“I have done so.”

“Would you mind telling us your name? It makes it so much more

convenient.”

Percy hesitated. Then he determined to meet her on her own ground.

“Certainly. My name is Franklin.”

“Father Franklin?” asked the girl, with just the faintest tinge of

mocking emphasis on the first word.

“Yes. Father Percy Franklin, from Archbishop’s House, Westminster,” said

the priest steadily.

“Well, then, Father Percy Franklin; can you tell us why you came here? I

mean, who sent for you?”

“Mrs. Brand sent for me.”

“Yes, but by what means?”

“That I must not say.”

“Oh, very good.... May we know what good comes of being ‘received into

the Church?’”

“By being received into the Church, the soul is reconciled to God.”

“Oh! (Oliver, be quiet.) And how do you do it, Father Franklin?”

Percy stood up abruptly.

“This is no good, madam,” he said. “What is the use of these questions?”

The girl looked at him in open-eyed astonishment, still with her hand on

her husband’s knee.

“The use, Father Franklin! Why, we want to know. There is no church law

against your telling us, is there?”

Percy hesitated again. He did not understand in the least what she was

after. Then he saw that he would give them an advantage if he lost his

head at all: so he sat down again.

“Certainly not. I will tell you if you wish to know. I heard Mrs.

Brand’s confession, and gave her absolution.”

“Oh! yes; and that does it, then? And what next?”

“She ought to receive Holy Communion, and anointing, if she is in danger

of death.”

Oliver twitched suddenly.

“Christ!” he said softly.

“Oliver!” cried the girl entreatingly. “Please leave this to me. It is

much better so.--And then, I suppose, Father Franklin, you want to give

those other things to my mother, too?”

“They are not absolutely necessary,” said the priest, feeling, he did

not know why, that he was somehow playing a losing game.

“Oh! they are not necessary? But you would like to?”

“I shall do so if possible. But I have done what is necessary.”

It required all his will to keep quiet. He was as a man who had armed

himself in steel, only to find that his enemy was in the form of a

subtle vapour. He simply had not an idea what to do next. He would have

given anything for the man to have risen and flown at his throat, for

this girl was too much for them both.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Well, it is hardly to be expected that my

husband should give you leave to come here again. But I am very glad

that you have done what you think necessary. No doubt it will be a

satisfaction to you, Father Franklin, and to the poor old thing

upstairs, too. While we--- _we_--” she pressed her husband’s knee--“we

do not mind at all. Oh!--but there is one thing more.”

“If you please,” said Percy, wondering what on earth was coming.

“You Christians--forgive me if I say anything rude--but, you know, you

Christians have a reputation for counting heads, and making the most of

converts. We shall be so much obliged, Father Franklin, if you will

give us your word not to advertise this--this incident. It would

distress my husband, and give him a great deal of trouble.”

“Mrs. Brand---” began the priest.

“One moment.... You see, we have not treated you badly. There has been

no violence. We will promise not to make scenes with my mother. Will you

promise us that?”

Percy had had time to consider, and he answered instantly.

“Certainly, I will promise that.”

Mabel sighed contentedly.

“Well, that is all right. We are so much obliged.... And I think we may

say this, that perhaps after consideration my husband may see his way to

letting you come here again to do Communion and--and the other thing---”

Again that spasm shook the man beside her.

“Well, we will see about that. At any rate, we know your address, and

can let you know.... By the way, Father Franklin, are you going back to

Westminster to-night?”

He bowed.

“Ah! I hope you will get through. You will find London very much

excited. Perhaps you heard---”

“Felsenburgh?” said Percy.

“Yes. Julian Felsenburgh,” said the girl softly, again with that strange

excitement suddenly alight in her eyes. “Julian Felsenburgh,” she

repeated. “He is there, you know. He will stay in England for the

present.”

Again Percy was conscious of that slight touch of fear at the mention of

that name.

“I understand there is to be peace,” he said.

The girl rose and her husband with her.

“Yes,” she said, almost compassionately, “there is to be peace. Peace at

last.” (She moved half a step towards him, and her face glowed like a

rose of fire. Her hand rose a little.) “Go back to London, Father

Franklin, and use your eyes. You will see him, I dare say, and you will

see more besides.” (Her voice began to vibrate.) “And you will

understand, perhaps, why we have treated you like this--why we are no

longer afraid of you--why we are willing that my mother should do as

she pleases. Oh! you will understand, Father Franklin if not to-night,

to-morrow; or if not to-morrow, at least in a very short time.”

“Mabel!” cried her husband.

The girl wheeled, and threw her arms round him, and kissed him on the

mouth.

“Oh! I am not ashamed, Oliver, my dear. Let him go and see for himself.

Good-night, Father Franklin.”

As he went towards the door, hearing the ping of the bell that some one

touched in the room behind him, he turned once more, dazed and

bewildered; and there were the two, husband and wife, standing in the

soft, sunny light, as if transfigured. The girl had her arm round the

man’s shoulder, and stood upright and radiant as a pillar of fire; and

even on the man’s face there was no anger now--nothing but an almost

supernatural pride and confidence. They were both smiling.

Then Percy passed out into the soft, summer night.

II

Percy understood nothing except that he was afraid, as he sat in the

crowded car that whirled him up to London. He scarcely even heard the

talk round him, although it was loud and continuous; and what he heard

meant little to him. He understood only that there had been strange

scenes, that London was said to have gone suddenly mad, that Felsenburgh

had spoken that night in Paul’s House.

He was afraid at the way in which he had been treated, and he asked

himself dully again and again what it was that had inspired that

treatment; it seemed that he had been in the presence of the

supernatural; he was conscious of shivering a little, and of the

symptoms of an intolerable sleepiness. It was scarcely strange to him

that he should be sitting in a crowded car at two o’clock of a summer

dawn.

Thrice the car stopped, and he stared out at the signs of confusion that

were everywhere; at the figures that ran in the twilight between the

tracks, at a couple of wrecked carriages, a tumble of tarpaulins; he

listened mechanically to the hoots and cries that sounded everywhere.

As he stepped out at last on to the platform, he found it very much as

he had left it two hours before. There was the same desperate rush as

the car discharged its load, the same dead body beneath the seat; and

above all, as he ran helplessly behind the crowd, scarcely knowing

whither he ran or why, above him burned the same stupendous message

beneath the clock. Then he found himself in the lift, and a minute later

he was out on the steps behind the station.

There, too, was an astonishing sight. The lamps still burned overhead,

but beyond them lay the first pale streaks of the false dawn. The street

that ran now straight to the old royal palace, uniting there, as at the

centre of a web, with those that came from Westminster, the Mall and

Hyde Park, was one solid pavement of heads. On this side and that rose

up the hotels and “Houses of Joy,” the windows all ablaze with light,

solemn and triumphant as if to welcome a king; while far ahead against

the sky stood the monstrous palace outlined in fire, and alight from

within like all other houses within view. The noise was bewildering. It

was impossible to distinguish one sound from another. Voices, horns,

drums, the tramp of a thousand footsteps on the rubber pavements, the

sombre roll of wheels from the station behind--all united in one

overwhelmingly solemn booming, overscored by shriller notes.

It was impossible to move.

He found himself standing in a position of extraordinary advantage, at

the very top of the broad flight of steps that led down into the old

station yard, now a wide space that united, on the left the broad road

to the palace, and on the right Victoria Street, that showed like all

else one vivid perspective of lights and heads. Against the sky on his

right rose up the illuminated head of the Cathedral Campanile. It

appeared to him as if he had known that in some previous existence.

He edged himself mechanically a foot or two to his left, till he clasped

a pillar; then he waited, trying not to analyse his emotions, but to

absorb them.

Gradually he became aware that this crowd was as no other that he had

ever seen. To his psychical sense it seemed to him that it possessed a

unity unlike any other. There was magnetism in the air. There was a

sensation as if a creative act were in process, whereby thousands of

individual cells were being welded more and more perfectly every instant

into one huge sentient being with one will, one emotion, and one head.

The crying of voices seemed significant only as the stirrings of this

creative power which so expressed itself. Here rested this giant

humanity, stretching to his sight in living limbs so far as he could see

on every side, waiting, waiting for some consummation--stretching, too,

as his tired brain began to guess, down every thoroughfare of the vast

city.

He did not even ask himself for what they waited. He knew, yet he did

not know. He knew it was for a revelation--for something that should

crown their aspirations, and fix them so for ever.

He had a sense that he had seen all this before; and, like a child, he

began to ask himself where it could have happened, until he remembered

that it was so that he had once dreamt of the Judgment Day--of humanity

gathered to meet Jesus Christ--Jesus Christ! Ah! how tiny that Figure

seemed to him now--how far away--real indeed, but insignificant to

himself--how hopelessly apart from this tremendous life! He glanced up

at the Campanile. Yes; there was a piece of the True Cross there, was

there not?--a little piece of the wood on which a Poor Man had died

twenty centuries ago.... Well, well. It was a long way off....

He did not quite understand what was happening to him. “Sweet Jesus, be

to me not a Judge but a Saviour,” he whispered beneath his breath,

gripping the granite of the pillar; and a moment later knew how futile

was that prayer. It was gone like a breath in this vast, vivid

atmosphere of man. He had said mass, had he not? this morning--in white

vestments.--Yes; he had believed it all then--desperately, but truly;

and now....

To look into the future was as useless as to look into the past. There

was no future, and no past: it was all one eternal instant, present and

final....

Then he let go of effort, and again began to see with his bodily eyes.

* * * * *

The dawn was coming up the sky now, a steady soft brightening that

appeared in spite of its sovereignty to be as nothing compared with the

brilliant light of the streets. “We need no sun,” he whispered, smiling

piteously; “no sun or light of a candle. We have our light on earth--the

light that lighteneth every man....”

The Campanile seemed further away than ever now, in that ghostly glimmer

of dawn--more and more helpless every moment, compared with the

beautiful vivid shining of the streets.

Then he listened to the sounds, and it seemed to him as if somewhere,

far down eastwards, there was a silence beginning. He jerked his head

impatiently, as a man behind him began to talk rapidly and confusedly.

Why would he not be silent, and let silence be heard?... The man stopped

presently, and out of the distance there swelled up a roar, as soft as

the roll of a summer tide; it passed up towards him from the right; it

was about him, dinning in his ears. There was no longer any individual

voice: it was the breathing of the giant that had been born; he was

crying out too; he did not know what he said, but he could not be

silent. His veins and nerves seemed alight with wine; and as he stared

down the long street, hearing the huge cry ebb from him and move toward

the palace, he knew why he had cried, and why he was now silent.

A slender, fish-shaped thing, as white as milk, as ghostly as a shadow,

and as beautiful as the dawn, slid into sight half-a-mile away, turned

and came towards him, floating, as it seemed, on the very wave of

silence that it created, up, up the long curving street on outstretched

wings, not twenty feet above the heads of the crowd. There was one great

sigh, and then silence once more.

* * * * *

When Percy could think consciously again--for his will was only capable

of efforts as a clock of ticks--the strange white thing was nearer. He

told himself that he had seen a hundred such before; and at the same

instant that this was different from all others.

Then it was nearer still, floating slowly, slowly, like a gull over the

sea; he could make out its smooth nose, its low parapet beyond, the

steersman’s head motionless; he could even hear now the soft winnowing

of the screw--and then he saw that for which he had waited.

High on the central deck there stood a chair, draped, too, in white,

with some insignia visible above its back; and in the chair sat the

figure of a man, motionless and lonely. He made no sign as he came; his

dark dress showed vividedly against the whiteness; his head was raised,

and he turned it gently now and again from side to side.

It came nearer still, in the profound stillness; the head turned, and

for an instant the face was plainly visible in the soft, radiant light.

It was a pale face, strongly marked, as of a young man, with arched,

black eyebrows, thin lips, and white hair.

Then the face turned once more, the steersman shifted his head, and the

beautiful shape, wheeling a little, passed the corner, and moved up

towards the palace.

There was an hysterical yelp somewhere, a cry, and again the tempestuous

groan broke out.

BOOK II-THE ENCOUNTER

CHAPTER I

I

Oliver Brand was seated at his desk, on the evening of the next day,

reading the leading article of the _New People_, evening edition.

* * * * *

“We have had time,” he read, “to recover ourselves a little from the

intoxication of last night. Before embarking on prophecy, it will be as

well to recall the facts. Up to yesterday evening our anxiety with

regard to the Eastern crisis continued; and when twenty-one o’clock

struck there were not more than forty persons in London--the English

delegates, that is to say--who knew positively that the danger was over.

Between that moment and half-an-hour later the Government took a few

discreet steps: a select number of persons were informed; the police

were called out, with half-a-dozen regiments, to preserve order; Paul’s

House was cleared; the railroad companies were warned; and at the half

hour precisely the announcement was made by means of the electric

placards in every quarter of London, as well as in all large provincial

towns. We have not space now to adequately describe the admirable manner

in which the public authorities did their duty; it is enough to say that

not more than seventy fatalities took place in the whole of London; nor

is it our business to criticise the action of the Government, in

choosing this mode of making the announcement.

“By twenty-two o’clock Paul’s House was filled in every corner, the Old

Choir was reserved for members of Parliament and public officials, the

quarter-dome galleries were filled with ladies, and to the rest of the

floor the public was freely admitted. The volor-police also inform us

now that for about the distance of one mile in every direction round

this centre every thoroughfare was blocked with pedestrians, and, two

hours later, as we all know, practically all the main streets of the

whole of London were in the same condition.

“It was an excellent choice by which Mr. OLIVER BRAND was selected as

the first speaker. His arm was still in bandages; and the appeal of his

figure as well as his passionate words struck the first explicit note of

the evening. A report of his words will be found in another column. In

their turns, the PRIME MINISTER, Mr. SNOWFORD, the FIRST MINISTER OF THE

ADMIRALTY, THE SECRETARY FOR EASTERN AFFAIRS, and LORD PEMBERTON, all

spoke a few words, corroborating the extraordinary news. At a quarter

before twenty-three, the noise of cheering outside announced the arrival

of the American delegates from Paris, and one by one these ascended the

platform by the south gates of the Old Choir. Each spoke in turn. It is

impossible to appreciate words spoken at such a moment as this; but

perhaps it is not invidious to name Mr. MARKHAM as the orator who above

all others appealed to those who were privileged to hear him. It was he,

too, who told us explicitly what others had merely mentioned, to the

effect that the success of the American efforts was entirely due to Mr.

JULIAN FELSENBURGH. As yet Mr. FELSENBURGH had not arrived; but in

answer to a roar of inquiry, Mr. MARKHAM announced that this gentleman

would be amongst them in a few minutes. He then proceeded to describe to

us, so far as was possible in a few sentences, the methods by which Mr.

FELSENBURGH had accomplished what is probably the most astonishing task

known to history. It seems from his words that Mr. FELSENBURGH (whose

biography, so far as it is known, we give in another column) is probably

the greatest orator that the world has ever known--we use these words

deliberately. All languages seem the same to him; he delivered speeches

during the eight months through which the Eastern Convention lasted, in

no less than fifteen tongues. Of his manner in speaking we shall have a

few remarks to make presently. He showed also, Mr. MARKHAM told us, the

most astonishing knowledge, not only of human nature, but of every trait

under which that divine thing manifests itself. He appeared acquainted

with the history, the prejudices, the fears, the hopes, the expectations

of all the innumerable sects and castes of the East to whom it was his

business to speak. In fact, as Mr. MARKHAM said, he is probably the

first perfect product of that new cosmopolitan creation to which the

world has laboured throughout its history. In no less than nine

places--Damascus, Irkutsk, Constantinople, Calcutta, Benares, Nanking,

among them--he was hailed as Messiah by a Mohammedan mob. Finally, in

America, where this extraordinary figure has arisen, all speak well of

him. He has been guilty of none of those crimes--there is not one that

convicts him of sin--those crimes of the Yellow Press, of corruption, of

commercial or political bullying which have so stained the past of all

those old politicians who made the sister continent what she has become.

Mr. FELSENBURGH has not even formed a party. He, and not his underlings,

have conquered. Those who were present in Paul’s House on this occasion

will understand us when we say that the effect of those words was

indescribable.

“When Mr. MARKHAM sat down, there was a silence; then, in order to quiet

the rising excitement, the organist struck the first chords of the

Masonic Hymn; the words were taken up, and presently not only the whole

interior of the building rang with it, but outside, too, the people

responded, and the city of London for a few moments became indeed a

temple of the Lord.

“Now indeed we come to the most difficult part of our task, and it is

better to confess at once that anything resembling journalistic

descriptiveness must be resolutely laid aside. The greatest things are

best told in the simplest words.

“Towards the close of the fourth verse, a figure in a plain dark suit

was observed ascending the steps of the platform. For a moment this

attracted no attention, but when it was seen that a sudden movement had

broken out among the delegates, the singing began to falter; and it

ceased altogether as the figure, after a slight inclination to right and

left, passed up the further steps that led to the rostrum. Then occurred

a curious incident. The organist aloft at first did not seem to

understand, and continued playing, but a sound broke out from the crowd

resembling a kind of groan, and instantly he ceased. But no cheering

followed. Instead a profound silence dominated in an instant the huge

throng; this, by some strange magnetism, communicated itself to those

without the building, and when Mr. FELSENBURGH uttered his first words,

it was in a stillness that was like a living thing. We leave the

explanation of this phenomenon to the expert in psychology.

“Of his actual words we have nothing to say. So far as we are aware no

reporter made notes at the moment; but the speech, delivered in

Esperanto, was a very simple one, and very short. It consisted of a

brief announcement of the great fact of Universal Brotherhood, a

congratulation to all who were yet alive to witness this consummation of

history; and, at the end, an ascription of praise to that Spirit of the

World whose incarnation was now accomplished.

“So much we can say; but we can say nothing as to the impression of the

personality who stood there. In appearance the man seemed to be about

thirty-three years of age, clean-shaven, upright, with white hair and

dark eyes and brows; he stood motionless with his hands on the rail, he

made but one gesture that drew a kind of sob from the crowd, he spoke

these words slowly, distinctly, and in a clear voice; then he stood

waiting.

“There was no response but a sigh which sounded in the ears of at least

one who heard it as if the whole world drew breath for the first time;

and then that strange heart-shaking silence fell again. Many were

weeping silently, the lips of thousands moved without a sound, and all

faces were turned to that simple figure, as if the hope of every soul

were centred there. So, if we may believe it, the eyes of many,

centuries ago, were turned on one known now to history as JESUS OF

NAZARETH.

“Mr. FELSENBURGH stood so a moment longer, then he turned down the

steps, passed across the platform and disappeared.

“Of what took place outside we have received the following account from

an eye-witness. The white volor, so well known now to all who were in

London that night, had remained stationary outside the little south door

of the Old Choir aisle, poised about twenty feet above the ground.

Gradually it became known to the crowd, in those few minutes, who it was

who had arrived in it, and upon Mr. FELSENBURGH’S reappearance that same

strange groan sounded through the whole length of Paul’s Churchyard,

followed by the same silence. The volor descended; the master stepped on

board, and once more the vessel rose to a height of twenty feet. It was

thought at first that some speech would be made, but none was necessary;

and after a moment’s pause, the volor began that wonderful parade which

London will never forget. Four times during the night Mr. FELSENBURGH

went round the enormous metropolis, speaking no word; and everywhere the

groan preceded and followed him, while silence accompanied his actual

passage. Two hours after sunrise the white ship rose over Hampstead and

disappeared towards the North; and since then he, whom we call, in

truth, the Saviour of the world, has not been seen.

“And now what remains to be said?

“Comment is useless. It is enough to say in one short sentence that the

new era has begun, to which prophets and kings, and the suffering, the

dying, all who labour and are heavy-laden, have aspired in vain. Not

only has intercontinental rivalry ceased to exist, but the strife of

home dissensions has ceased also. Of him who has been the herald of its

inauguration we have nothing more to say. Time alone can show what is

yet left for him to do.

“But what has been done is as follows. The Eastern peril has been for

ever dissipated. It is understood now, by fanatic barbarians as well as

by civilised nations, that the reign of War is ended. ‘Not peace but a

sword,’ said CHRIST; and bitterly true have those words proved to be.

‘Not a sword but peace’ is the retort, articulate at last, from those

who have renounced CHRIST’S claims or have never accepted them. The

principle of love and union learned however falteringly in the West

during the last century, has been taken up in the East as well. There

shall be no more an appeal to arms, but to justice; no longer a crying

after a God Who hides Himself, but to Man who has learned his own

Divinity. The Supernatural is dead; rather, we know now that it never

yet has been alive. What remains is to work out this new lesson, to

bring every action, word and thought to the bar of Love and Justice; and

this will be, no doubt, the task of years. Every code must be reversed;

every barrier thrown down; party must unite with party, country with

country, and continent with continent. There is no longer the fear of

fear, the dread of the hereafter, or the paralysis of strife. Man has

groaned long enough in the travails of birth; his blood has been poured

out like water through his own foolishness; but at length he understands

himself and is at peace.

“Let it be seen at least that England is not behind the nations in this

work of reformation; let no national isolation, pride of race, or

drunkenness of wealth hold her hands back from this enormous work. The

responsibility is incalculable, but the victory certain. Let us go

softly, humbled by the knowledge of our crimes in the past, confident in

the hope of our achievements in the future, towards that reward which is

in sight at last--the reward hidden so long by the selfishness of men,

the darkness of religion, and the strife of tongues--the reward promised

by one who knew not what he said and denied what he asserted--Blessed

are the meek, the peacemakers, the merciful, for they shall inherit the

earth, be named the children of God, and find mercy.”

* * * * *

Oliver, white to the lips, with his wife kneeling now beside him, turned

the page and read one more short paragraph, marked as being the latest

news.

“It is understood that the Government is in communication with Mr.

Felsenburgh.”

II

“Ah! it is journalese,” said Oliver, at last, leaning back. “Tawdry

stuff! But--but the thing!”

Mabel got up, passed across to the window-seat, and sat down. Her lips

opened once or twice, but she said nothing.

“My darling,” cried the man, “have you nothing to say?”

She looked at him tremulously a moment.

“Say!” she said. “As you said, What is the use of words?”

“Tell me again,” said Oliver. “How do I know it is not a dream?”

“A dream,” she said. “Was there ever a dream like this?”

Again she got up restlessly, came across the floor, and knelt down by

her husband once more, taking his hands in hers.

“My dear,” she said, “I tell you it is not a dream. It is reality at

last. I was there too--do you not remember? You waited for me when all

was over--when He was gone out--we saw Him together, you and I. We heard

Him--you on the platform and I in the gallery. We saw Him again pass up

the Embankment as we stood in the crowd. Then we came home and we found

the priest.”

Her face was transfigured as she spoke. It was as of one who saw a

Divine Vision. She spoke very quietly, without excitement or hysteria.

Oliver stared at her a moment; then he bent forward and kissed her

gently.

“Yes, my darling; it is true. But I want to hear it again and again.

Tell me again what you saw.”

“I saw the Son of Man,” she said. “Oh! there is no other phrase. The

Saviour of the world, as that paper says. I knew Him in my heart as soon

as I saw Him--as we all did--as soon as He stood there holding the rail.

It was like a glory round his head. I understand it all now. It was He

for whom we have waited so long; and He has come, bringing Peace and

Goodwill in His hands. When He spoke, I knew it again. His voice was

as--as the sound of the sea--as simple as that--as--as lamentable--as

strong as that.--Did you not hear it?”

Oliver bowed his head.

“I can trust Him for all the rest,” went on the girl softly. “I do not

know where He is, nor when He will come back, nor what He will do. I

suppose there is a great deal for Him to do, before He is fully

known--laws, reforms--that will be your business, my dear. And the rest

of us must wait, and love, and be content.”

Oliver again lifted his face and looked at her.

“Mabel, my dear---”

“Oh! I knew it even last night,” she said, “but I did not know that I

knew it till I awoke to-day and remembered. I dreamed of Him all

night.... Oliver, where is He?”

He shook his head.

“Yes, I know where He is, but I am under oath---”

She nodded quickly, and stood up.

“Yes. I should not have asked that. Well, we are content to wait.”

There was silence for a moment or two. Oliver broke it.

“My dear, what do you mean when you say that He is not yet known?”

“I mean just that,” she said. “The rest only know what He has done--not

what He is; but that, too, will come in time.”

“And meanwhile---”

“Meanwhile, you must work; the rest will come by and bye. Oh! Oliver, be

strong and faithful.”

She kissed him quickly, and went out.

* * * * *

Oliver sat on without moving, staring, as his habit was, out at the wide

view beyond his windows. This time yesterday he was leaving Paris,

knowing the fact indeed--for the delegates had arrived an hour

before--but ignorant of the Man. Now he knew the Man as well--at least

he had seen Him, heard Him, and stood enchanted under the glow of His

personality. He could explain it to himself no more than could any one

else--unless, perhaps, it were Mabel. The others had been as he had

been: awed and overcome, yet at the same time kindled in the very depths

of their souls. They had come out--Snowford, Cartwright, Pemberton, and

the rest--on to the steps of Paul’s House, following that strange

figure. They had intended to say something, but they were dumb as they

saw the sea of white faces, heard the groan and the silence, and

experienced that compelling wave of magnetism that surged up like

something physical, as the volor rose and started on that indescribable

progress.

Once more he had seen Him, as he and Mabel stood together on the deck of

the electric boat that carried them south. The white ship had passed

along overhead, smooth and steady, above the heads of that vast

multitude, bearing Him who, if any had the right to that title, was

indeed the Saviour of the world. Then they had come home, and found the

priest.

That, too, had been a shock to him; for, at first sight, it seemed that

this priest was the very man he had seen ascend the rostrum two hours

before. It was an extraordinary likeness--the same young face and white

hair. Mabel, of course, had not noticed it; for she had only seen

Felsenburgh at a great distance; and he himself had soon been reassured.

And as for his mother--it was terrible enough; if it had not been for

Mabel there would have been violence done last night. How collected and

reasonable she had been! And, as for his mother--he must leave her alone

for the present. By and bye, perhaps, something might be done. The

future! It was that which engrossed him--the future, and the absorbing

power of the personality under whose dominion he had fallen last night.

All else seemed insignificant now--even his mother’s defection, her

illness--all paled before this new dawn of an unknown sun. And in an

hour he would know more; he was summoned to Westminster to a meeting of

the whole House; their proposals to Felsenburgh were to be formulated;

it was intended to offer him a great position.

Yes, as Mabel had said; this was now their work--to carry into

effect the new principle that had suddenly become incarnate in this

grey-haired young American--the principle of Universal Brotherhood.

It would mean enormous labour; all foreign relations would have to

be readjusted--trade, policy, methods of government--all demanded

re-statement. Europe was already organised internally on a basis of

mutual protection: that basis was now gone. There was no more any

protection, because there was no more any menace. Enormous labour,

too, awaited the Government in other directions. A Blue-book must be

prepared, containing a complete report of the proceedings in the East,

together with the text of the Treaty which had been laid before them

in Paris, signed by the Eastern Emperor, the feudal kings, the Turkish

Republic, and countersigned by the American plenipotentiaries....

Finally, even home politics required reform: the friction of old strife

between centre and extremes must cease forthwith--there must be but one

party now, and that at the Prophet’s disposal.... He grew bewildered

as he regarded the prospect, and saw how the whole plane of the world

was shifted, how the entire foundation of western life required

readjustment. It was a Revolution indeed, a cataclysm more stupendous

than even invasion itself; but it was the conversion of darkness into

light, and chaos into order.

He drew a deep breath, and so sat pondering.

* * * * *

Mabel came down to him half-an-hour later, as he dined early before

starting for Whitehall.

“Mother is quieter,” she said. “We must be very patient, Oliver. Have

you decided yet as to whether the priest is to come again?”

He shook his head.

“I can think of nothing,” he said, “but of what I have to do. You

decide, my dear; I leave it in your hands.”

She nodded.

“I will talk to her again presently. Just now she can understand very

little of what has happened.... What time shall you be home?”

“Probably not to-night. We shall sit all night.”

“Yes, dear. And what shall I tell Mr. Phillips?”

“I will telephone in the morning.... Mabel, do you remember what I told

you about the priest?”

“His likeness to the other?”

“Yes. What do you make of that?”

She smiled.

“I make nothing at all of it. Why should they not be alike?”

He took a fig from the dish, and swallowed it, and stood up.

“It is only very curious,” he said. “Now, good-night, my dear.”

III

“Oh, mother,” said Mabel, kneeling by the bed; “cannot you understand

what has happened?”

She had tried desperately to tell the old lady of the extraordinary

change that had taken place in the world--and without success. It seemed

to her that some great issue depended on it; that it would be piteous if

the old woman went out into the dark unconscious of what had come. It

was as if a Christian knelt by the death-bed of a Jew on the first

Easter Monday. But the old lady lay in her bed, terrified but obdurate.

“Mother,” said the girl, “let me tell you again. Do you not understand

that all which Jesus Christ promised has come true, though in another

way? The reign of God has really begun; but we know now who God is. You

said just now you wanted the Forgiveness of Sins; well, you have that;

we all have it, because there is no such thing as sin. There is only

Crime. And then Communion. You used to believe that that made you a

partaker of God; well, we are all partakers of God, because we are human

beings. Don’t you see that Christianity is only one way of saying all

that? I dare say it was the only way, for a time; but that is all over

now. Oh! and how much better this is! It is true--true. You can see it

to be true!”

She paused a moment, forcing herself to look at that piteous old face,

the flushed wrinkled cheeks, the writhing knotted hands on the coverlet.

“Look how Christianity has failed--how it has divided people; think of

all the cruelties--the Inquisition, the Religious Wars; the separations

between husband and wife and parents and children--the disobedience to

the State, the treasons. Oh! you cannot believe that these were right.

What kind of a God would that be! And then Hell; how could you ever have

believed in that?... Oh! mother, don’t believe anything so frightful....

Don’t you understand that that God has gone--that He never existed at

all--that it was all a hideous nightmare; and that now we all know at

last what the truth is.... Mother! think of what happened last

night--how He came--the Man of whom you were so frightened. I told you

what He was like--so quiet and strong--how every one was silent--of

the--the extraordinary atmosphere, and how six millions of people saw

Him. And think what He has done--how He has healed all the old

wounds--how the whole world is at peace at last--and of what is going to

happen. Oh! mother, give up those horrible old lies; give them up; be

brave.”

“The priest, the priest!” moaned the old woman at last.

“Oh! no, no, no--not the priest; he can do nothing. He knows it’s all

lies, too!”

“The priest! the priest!” moaned the other again. “He can tell you; he

knows the answer.”

Her face was convulsed with effort, and her old fingers fumbled and

twisted with the rosary. Mabel grew suddenly frightened, and stood up.

“Oh! mother!” She stooped and kissed her. “There! I won’t say any more

now. But just think about it quietly. Don’t be in the least afraid; it

is all perfectly right.”

She stood a moment, still looking compassionately down; torn by sympathy

and desire. No! it was no use now; she must wait till the next day.

“I’ll look in again presently,” she said, “when you have had dinner.

Mother! don’t look like that! Kiss me!”

It was astonishing, she told herself that evening, how any one could be

so blind. And what a confession of weakness, too, to call only for the

priest! It was ludicrous, absurd! She herself was filled with an

extraordinary peace. Even death itself seemed now no longer terrible,

for was not death swallowed up in victory? She contrasted the selfish

individualism of the Christian, who sobbed and shrank from death, or, at

the best, thought of it only as the gate to his own eternal life, with

the free altruism of the New Believer who asked no more than that Man

should live and grow, that the Spirit of the World should triumph and

reveal Himself, while he, the unit, was content to sink back into that

reservoir of energy from which he drew his life. At this moment she

would have suffered anything, faced death cheerfully--she contemplated

even the old woman upstairs with pity--for was it not piteous that death

should not bring her to herself and reality?

She was in a quiet whirl of intoxication; it was as if the heavy veil of

sense had rolled back at last and shown a sweet, eternal landscape

behind--a shadowless land of peace where the lion lay down with the

lamb, and the leopard with the kid. There should be war no more: that

bloody spectre was dead, and with him the brood of evil that lived in

his shadow--superstition, conflict, terror, and unreality. The idols

were smashed, and rats had run out; Jehovah was fallen; the wild-eyed

dreamer of Galilee was in his grave; the reign of priests was ended. And

in their place stood a strange, quiet figure of indomitable power and

unruffled tenderness.... He whom she had seen--the Son of Man, the

Saviour of the world, as she had called Him just now--He who bore these

titles was no longer a monstrous figure, half God and half man, claiming

both natures and possessing neither; one who was tempted without

temptation, and who conquered without merit, as his followers said. Here

was one instead whom she could follow, a god indeed and a man as well--a

god because human, and a man because so divine.

She said no more that night. She looked into the bedroom for a few

minutes, and saw the old woman asleep. Her old hand lay out on the

coverlet, and still between the fingers was twisted the silly string of

beads. Mabel went softly across in the shaded light, and tried to detach

it; but the wrinkled fingers writhed and closed, and a murmur came from

the half-open lips. Ah! how piteous it was, thought the girl, how

hopeless that a soul should flow out into such darkness, unwilling to

make the supreme, generous surrender, and lay down its life because life

itself demanded it!

Then she went to her own room.

* * * * *

The clocks were chiming three, and the grey dawn lay on the walls, when

she awoke to find by her bed the woman who had sat with the old lady.

“Come at once, madam; Mrs. Brand is dying.”

IV

Oliver was with them by six o’clock; he came straight up into his

mother’s room to find that all was over.

The room was full of the morning light and the clean air, and a bubble

of bird-music poured in from the lawn. But his wife knelt by the bed,

still holding the wrinkled hands of the old woman, her face buried in

her arms. The face of his mother was quieter than he had ever seen it,

the lines showed only like the faintest shadows on an alabaster mask;

her lips were set in a smile. He looked for a moment, waiting until the

spasm that caught his throat had died again. Then he put his hand on his

wife’s shoulder.

“When?” he said.

Mabel lifted her face.

“Oh! Oliver,” she murmured. “It was an hour ago. ... Look at this.”

She released the dead hands and showed the rosary still twisted there;

it had snapped in the last struggle, and a brown bead lay beneath the

fingers.

“I did what I could,” sobbed Mabel. “I was not hard with her. But she

would not listen. She kept on crying out for the priest as long as she

could speak.”

“My dear....” began the man. Then he, too, went down on his knees by

his wife, leaned forward and kissed the rosary, while tears blinded him.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Leave her in peace. I would not move it for the

world: it was her toy, was it not?”

The girl stared at him, astonished.

“We can be generous, too,” he said. “We have all the world at last. And

she--she has lost nothing: it was too late.”

“I did what I could.”

“Yes, my darling, and you were right. But she was too old; she could not

understand.”

He paused.

“Euthanasia?” he whispered with something very like tenderness.

She nodded.

“Yes,” she said; “just as the last agony began. She resisted, but I knew

you would wish it.”

They talked together for an hour in the garden before Oliver went to his

room; and he began to tell her presently of all that had passed.

“He has refused,” he said. “We offered to create an office for Him; He

was to have been called Consultor, and he refused it two hours ago. But

He has promised to be at our service.... No, I must not tell you where

He is.... He will return to America soon, we think; but He will not

leave us. We have drawn up a programme, and it is to be sent to Him

presently.... Yes, we were unanimous.”

“And the programme?”

“It concerns the Franchise, the Poor Laws and Trade. I can tell you no

more than that. It was He who suggested the points. But we are not sure

if we understand Him yet.”

“But, my dear---”

“Yes; it is quite extraordinary. I have never seen such things. There

was practically no argument.”

“Do the people understand?”

“I think so. We shall have to guard against a reaction. They say that

the Catholics will be in danger. There is an article this morning in the

_Era_. The proofs were sent to us for sanction. It suggests that means

must be taken to protect the Catholics.”

Mabel smiled.

“It is a strange irony,” he said. “But they have a right to exist. How

far they have a right to share in the government is another matter. That

will come before us, I think, in a week or two.”

“Tell me more about Him.”

“There is really nothing to tell; we know nothing, except that He is the

supreme force in the world. France is in a ferment, and has offered him

Dictatorship. That, too, He has refused. Germany has made the same

proposal as ourselves; Italy, the same as France, with the title of

Perpetual Tribune. America has done nothing yet, and Spain is divided.”

“And the East?”

“The Emperor thanked Him; no more than that.”

Mabel drew a long breath, and stood looking out across the heat haze

that was beginning to rise from the town beneath. These were matters so

vast that she could not take them in. But to her imagination Europe lay

like a busy hive, moving to and fro in the sunshine. She saw the blue

distance of France, the towns of Germany, the Alps, and beyond them the

Pyrenees and sun-baked Spain; and all were intent on the same business,

to capture if they could this astonishing figure that had risen over the

world. Sober England, too, was alight with zeal. Each country desired

nothing better than that this man should rule over them; and He had

refused them all.

“He has refused them all!” she repeated breathlessly.

“Yes, all. We think He may be waiting to hear from America. He still

holds office there, you know.”

“How old is He?”

“Not more than thirty-two or three. He has only been in office a few

months. Before that He lived alone in Vermont. Then He stood for the

Senate; then He made a speech or two; then He was appointed delegate,

though no one seems to have realised His power. And the rest we know.”

Mabel shook her head meditatively.

“We know nothing,” she said. “Nothing; nothing! Where did He learn His

languages?”

“It is supposed that He travelled for many years. But no one knows. He

has said nothing.”

She turned swiftly to her husband.

“But what does it all mean? What is His power? Tell me, Oliver?”

He smiled back, shaking his head.

“Well, Markham said that it was his incorruption--that and his oratory;

but that explains nothing.”

“No, it explains nothing,” said the girl.

“It is just personality,” went on Oliver, “at least, that’s the label to

use. But that, too, is only a label.”

“Yes, just a label. But it is that. They all felt it in Paul’s House,

and in the streets afterwards. Did you not feel it?”

“Feel it!” cried the man, with shining eyes. “Why, I would die for Him!”

* * * * *

They went back to the house presently, and it was not till they reached

the door that either said a word about the dead old woman who lay

upstairs.

“They are with her now,” said Mabel softly. “I will communicate with the

people.”

He nodded gravely.

“It had better be this afternoon,” he said. “I have a spare hour at

fourteen o’clock. Oh! by the way, Mabel, do you know who took the

message to the priest?”

“I think so.”

“Yes, it was Phillips. I saw him last night. He will not come here

again.”

“Did he confess it?”

“He did. He was most offensive.”

But Oliver’s face softened again as he nodded to his wife at the foot of

the stairs, and turned to go up once more to his mother’s room.