THE POPE COMES TO AMERICA
The Mayor was buried with splendid pomp. His body lay in state;
the militia who flocked back as the alarm over the city’s dilemma
spread to the neighboring cities, with the garrisons of the regular
troops, who had also returned, formed his escort, and the music
at his funeral touched the limits of elegiac elaboration. A sense
of his excellence as an administrator, a sudden recognition of
his intellectual delicacy and skill, combined with the thrill of
admiration felt at his daring in confronting the rioters, the relief
that followed the dispersal of the insurrection together with the
repudiation of the whole Longtinsky anarchistic plot by the sane and
moderate socialistic organs contributed to elevate his memory, and
imbue his name with a peculiar—to some a mystifying—glory of renown
and nobility.
When all was over, the huge city-state resumed its myriad activities,
and for a while the political asperities abated, the differing
parties vanished, and the warring sections of society forgot or
dissembled their mutual hatred. The exhortations of the Mayor
were printed on cards, sold as mottoes, or decorated the pages of
the newspapers. He was regarded as a martyr, a sacrifice to the
turbulence and wickedness of agitators and plotters, and, with
something like a religious ecstacy the people idolized his memory,
and before the adoration, clamor, discord, petulance and envy,
for a time, hid themselves. A wonderful peace prevailed, and the
magnificent metropolis turned to its avocations or its pleasures with
unrestrained energy and delight.
Mr. Briggs, who now worshipped the memory of his master, became
attached to a newspaper, and furnished periodic outbursts of
Cassandra-like prophecy over the dark future which threatened society
at large, and while they, when read aloud, had a portentous sound,
and a certain rhetorical ornamentation with enough penetration to
make them significant, they were generally wisely put aside as
sophomoric and unnecessary. Mr. Briggs brought the Mayor’s mother
to his home, and this partnership proved wonderfully consoling
to the afflicted lady. Mr. Briggs lived in one of the charming
colonial restorations of the Greenwich village area of the city, and
maintained—though a bachelor—an establishment of considerable dignity.
Of course Tom Ratler survived his encounter with Poni, and seized the
fruits of his popularity with the gentle and pretty Jessie Longtinsky
and she discovered upon the death of her father, that a moderate
competence was hers. The conspirators—at least the formidable Bomber,
Madder, Putkof, and Poni himself—were put behind the bars for a
practically life period, and no ingenuities of law were expended in
proving the injustice of this arrangement. As to the rest, hundreds
of whom were under arrest, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and
the prisoners who had brought about the famous trial, all, except
Polinck, were discharged; Polinck being reserved for another trial.
In this general dispensation of urbanity and moderation none rejoiced
more than Helen Lorimer. She undertook the education and advancement
of the abnormal child Angelo Shimura, and especially she turned
to the project she had discussed so long ago with the Mayor—her
Museum—and which now might become a sort of memorial of the man
himself—with almost religious ardor.
The question of the classes still remained unsettled, and Helen
Lorimer as the apostle of the essential necessity of a _classified_
Society, with the avenues of promotion fully created through
education, and with emphasis laid upon the essential mutual
interaction of all parts of Society with particular reference
to the indispensable patriotism and benevolence—in a large and
economic sense—of the upper classes, began again her instructions,
and readings, and writings. For a time, Amato felt her intellect
put aside the claims of her emotions or else—WAS IT, that in this
outburst of energy and propagandist zeal she sought again in some
esoteric way, the companionship of the man she deeply mourned. The
splendid magnanimity of Rudolpho found no fault with this. There
was a little hurt, a little uneasiness and dismay perhaps, but the
gentleness of his nature, the fine heroism of his feelings, quickly
restored his equanimity and he followed at her side, encouraged all
her attempts, aided her designs, and so patiently and wisely obeyed
her wishes that he entered deeper and deeper into her affections, and
captivated her anew by the beauty of his unselfishness.
It was a few weeks after the death of the Mayor that a most
unexpected occurrence brought the man’s personality again vividly
forward and reawakened in Helen Lorimer the half forgotten plan
to strengthen the religious life of the country by establishing
the Pope within it. The latter project had momentarily lost its
interest, though with Cardinal Fenton, who now fully understood
the inevitable union of his nephew and Miss Lorimer, it had only
suffered a temporary suppression. Conditions indeed in Europe
became more and more insupportable for the Church. The exorbitant
so-called civilization with the still surviving colossal selfishness,
viciousness and hollowness of the representatives of inherited
privilege, had produced through two opposite influences an almost
total repudiation of religion, looked at in large way, and as
representing a national feeling.
First the strong socialistic tendencies—verging into radical phases
contemplating the extermination of Society as constituted—denied
the tenets of formal religion, and advised its abolition; second,
the sensual and sensational inclinations of the upper classes had
reached ruinous proportions. They amounted to a moral devastation.
Europe, advanced in the methods of enlivening life by exciting
appetite, had also become eclipsed in its intellectual aspects by
the hebetude that succeeds satiety, and religion was laughed at or
cultivated as a cloak to deceive the herd. The tabernacles were
empty, the priests were useless, the Pope was impoverished, the
prestige of the Church had vanished.
Cardinal Fenton realized sorrowfully that in the protestant
Teutonic nations religion yet held its sway more rigorously,
than in the former homes of his own church; that Russia, somehow
barricaded within a wall of barbarous autocracy and childish slavish
superstitions maintained its quondam religious expression almost
unchanged. To him and an advanced group of Catholic prelates in
Europe and America a surmise that American influences somehow
established the Church, renovated and revivified it had become a
conviction. To them for some years the dream of bringing the Pope
to America, of—the language was decorously veiled in its apparent
significance—liberating him from the somnolent antiquities, the
enthralling traditions, the half ludicrous isolation, or, to quote
language used less obsequiously, a hundred years before, by Father
McGlynn, of putting the Pope in the streets of New York with a
stove-pipe hat on his head, had become more and more alluring.
Here in America the Church had shuffled off the encumbering follies
which had grown up within her through a constant association with
a system of privilege, of monarchy, of the artifices of title and
place. In America, in a sweet exhilarating air of free institutions,
universal opportunity, and amid fresh pure aspirations for happiness,
the Church forgot cabals and intrigues and politics, and generated
itself in a region apart, in worship, good deeds, lofty teachings,
sacramental offices, and enveloped, at least by implication ALL,
under the aegis of its divine commission. Its personnel became
saturated with sense and sympathy, and no more useful men than its
priests could be found in practical charity, educational enthusiasm,
and broad philosophic erudition. Protestantism had almost protested
itself out of existence.
To this New World let the Pope come. It seemed to men like Fenton,
the last chance, the last entrenchment wherein the incessant fight
against Negation might be fought. And to pious Catholic patriots
it seemed that so good a possession as the Pope belonged to their
own dear country. On the other hand it meant the uprooting of an
established identification of Rome and the church of two thousand
years, something almost appalling to conceive of. Should the arc
of that covenant be ruthlessly touched—even though it shook and
tottered—by the modern Uzzahs of this movement?
Yet many believed the violent disruption desirable. As in a sedentary
organism parasitic things, mere unavailing accidents had become
encysted in the outward tissue of the Church, enfeebling it. These
would be dislodged, shaken off, and left behind. They had been
debilitating and even malign. Tone, a freshened vigor, a stronger,
readier, adaptive stage to the new outlooks in the New World would
succeed, or by another imagery, the barque of the Church launched
upon a broader, brighter sea would free itself of old wrecks,
floating debris, the relics of mistakes, collisions, abandoned
cargoes, the barnacle growths of centuries, and sail forward to new
ports with certainty and power. The encrustations of foolish practice
the mere hindrances of time-honored but stupid devotions—as that of
the Bambino—would be swept away, and the Church more intellectually
more healthfully, with a freer scope of thought, and with No Loss
of essential dogma would confront her enemies, her critics, the
whole antagonistic World, still championing the claim of her divine
authority.
Helen Lorimer and Cardinal Fenton had often talked over all these
things; for years the latter cherished the idea with a foolish
fervor. Gradually the number of adherents grew. It was recognized
as an inner illuminated circle, and without any formal pledges,
secrecy was self imposed and sternly guarded. Entrance to the College
of Cardinals at Rome had been effected, and with every renewed
outburst of hostility to the Pope, not only were the convictions of
the sympathizers strengthened but new converts were gained. At one
time, the moment alluded to in a former chapter when Helen Lorimer
and Amato met in the library of the Cardinal, the approaching crisis
seemed imminent and the little Society of the Americanists, as its
members called themselves, was transported with hopeful expectations.
But disappointment—a crushing reversal of all their dreams followed.
The Pope caught ear of the revolutionary scheme, denied and denounced
it. It became doubtful whether or not some sort of Bull might not
threaten the extermination of the cult, and put on it the stigma of
heresy. With this danger hanging over them everything became still,
and the frightened colleagues no longer ventilated their hopes, or
even indulged in the precarious pleasure of consoling each other.
Cardinal Fenton bided his time. His knowledge of the crumbling state
of the European religious institution was too large and keen to
permit him to doubt some eventual catastrophe.
Helen Lorimer plunged into her humanitarian and civil schemes. Amato
said nothing. He was her faithful hand servant, always ready, always
sympathetic, ever gracious, loving, willing and enchanting. So the
thought of the Pope’s Importation, as it was half ironically referred
to—had apparently been forgotten when the thing happened which again,
by some peculiar reasoning, brought it back compellingly into Helen
Lorimer’s mind; and almost immediately something else happened in
Europe that actually won for it toleration and final accomplishment
there.
In America the momentous influence with Miss Lorimer was a posthumous
publication of a little book by the Mayor—the MS was found among his
papers by Mr. Briggs—entitled MORE LIGHT. It created a sensation.
None read it more excitedly than Helen Lorimer, Cardinal Fenton,
and Amato. Helen detected in it some of her own ideas literally
reproduced, and saw plainly a deeper influence pervading it, which
she knew was hers also. The book made the Mayor live again before her
eyes and live even more strangely and despotically within her heart.
Amato knew this, and a sharp pain sprang through his being but he
persisted with the same admirable temper, and no reproach rose to his
lips, not even a trace of the almost insupportable knowledge could be
discerned in his words, or his behaviour. As ever he did her bidding
with incomparable zeal.
The book began with an eloquent and convincing picture of the World’s
distress, the aimlessness, fragility, hopelessness, pettiness of
life in millions upon millions of human beings, the astonishing
and apparently purposeless fecundity of the race, the silence of
the grave, the depravity and meanness of mere living—and then
in chapters, fervid with wonder and despair it pointed out the
extraordinary inadequacy of Revelation, even when supplemented by all
the authority and beauty of the Church—and it closed with a thrilling
imploring appeal to the shut and silent skies, urging the whole Earth
through its manifold organs of utterance to upbraid and beseech those
skies, to force their mocking canopy of blue to open and let down
new vessels of Consecration and of Knowledge. It was well conceived,
skillfully graded in a progression of intense feeling to its climax,
and it enlisted a lyric power of expression which caught the reader
in the broad and noble flow of its imagery and emotion.
Helen Lorimer had read the book aloud to her Mother—still unwell—and
to Amato in the great library of her home. It was a room the reader
has not entered, and it was the chief treasure of the marvelous
palace. It lay in a northern section of the mansion with its roof
upheld by columns of Numidian marble. The ceiling in groined vaults
sprang from capital to capital and each vault held the golden picture
of a constellation set in a blue background. The book-cases in square
rose-wood boxes encased the columns at their bases; only at two
points around the room did the book-cases rise higher than four feet,
and here on both the east and west walls latticed shelves carried
the books almost to the high ceiling. Everywhere upon the low cases
stood marble busts and Barye bronzes. The walls were fairly covered
by paintings, though they might easily have been increased in numbers
without exhausting the ample space. Windows pierced the walls above
the book-cases on the sides, nowhere reaching the floor, and only one
entrance permitted access to this generous study.
The north end of the library was surrendered to the installation
of a gigantic fireplace built of a soft sienna terra-cotta brick,
with a high broad marble mantle above it, on which was placed a
marble _replica_ of the Hudson-Fulton Water Gate, while over that
on the wall above hung an entrancing painting of the East River in
the Morning when the pearly exhalations of the dawn, the smoke of
a propeller and the projecting cliffs of the bridge-piers and high
buildings, with the tracery of the bridge cables and roads compose
one of the most wonderful metropolitan pictures on the entire earth.
Sheraton chairs and tables were pleasantly disposed throughout the
room, and on the tables were objects of interest and beauty. The
floor was covered from end to end and from side to side with a
deep cramoisy-red carpet that gave luxurious warmth to the whole
room; green tapestries framed the windows, and the illumination was
achieved by opaline globes from the apex of each groined vault while
on the tables burned oil lamps of captivating designs in glass and
brass. The room was almost too grandiose, too public and expositional
in character, but its beauty was really remarkable and the first
impression on entering it was memorable. The books were not numerous,
many book-shelves were empty; the lowness of the book-cases precluded
a very large collection.
The winter had grown cold and now, at the end of February a heavy
snow mantled the Inwood ridge, and Carrara amid its leafless trees
rose from the dazzling surface, an indifferent rival of its purity.
The wind drove through the ranged mansions, the bleak highway was
deserted, but at night, as ever, enhanced in its strange loveliness,
the electrical aureole crowned the huge metropolis, this monumental
city-state where hurrying feet sought work and pleasure, and vice and
devotion and labor followed their designed and inevitable tasks.
Julieta, Helen Lorimer, and Amato sat in front of the great hearth
and the eyes of two watched the scurrying wisps of blue and yellow
light moving waywardly over the blocks of coal. The third—Helen—was
somewhat behind the other two at a round table reading. The last
sentence of the Mayor’s book was heard; it ran, “the Revelation,
the churches, our spirits—to-day the sole witnesses to God—move
in regions of persuasion exorbitantly feeble for the purposes of
Conviction in this matter, and, through the avenues of prayer, by
which all our needs should receive consideration, we ask, or may ask
for a SIGN.
“If God answers, the world emerges into a welcome light of
reassurance, and, if there is no answer, then seizing, as it were
the reins of things ourselves, let society resolve into new units of
action, in conformity with the demands of an utilitarian UTOPIA.”
The voice was clear and penetrating with an indefinable sweetness in
it that thrilled Amato—as it had often thrilled the dead writer of
these pregnant words. There was a silence, and again the voice was
heard:
“Those are sad, they sound to me as dreadful words. It is the
expatriation of Hope, the convulsion of despair, and that means the
Death of the Soul. If only those who ask so much could FEEL; their
questions would then die on their lips.”
“No,” answered Amato, “perhaps not. The thought is plain enough and
as he—the author puts it—it does not really seem so unreasonable. It
has a noble ring after all.”
“But,” continued Helen, “the SIGN is here. Surely you, Rudolpho
Amato”—a start brought the listener’s face around towards the
speaker, and it was filled with an almost strained attention—“know
there can be for Us, you and me”—Amato’s eyes grew tender and
grateful—“but one sign. It is the CHURCH; THAT IS THE COVENANT. To
go beyond it, outside of it, away from it, is to stumble heedlessly,
and to stumble too, unforgiven and unhelped”; it almost seemed to
Amato that the voice grew a little hard. And yet at that very moment
his own heart leaped with a great joy—it meant Helen’s return to him
from the personified Memory that had so weirdly and just perceptibly
separated them.
Amato looked a minute longer at the wonderfully beautiful and earnest
woman and then turned to the dancing flickers before him, saying:
“Are honest doubts to be so harshly punished?”
“It is the LAW,” quickly answered the woman, and in her eagerness she
rose, the Mayor’s book closing behind her on the table; “we cannot
extricate ourselves from our own conditions: we are not permitted
to criticise them. It is not a question of whether this is the best
possible world. Rather is it a question, is this a world at all?—are
we here—is anything a reality? If one allows himself to drop into
the bottomless pit of Negation, HE IS LOST. Faith—faith only is the
solvent of doubt and—it must be either Faith or doubt. Yes, there can
be works, good works, this Man”—the voice paused an instant—“was a
worker, a hard, belligerent, noble worker—works it seems to me attest
to some sort of faith—but as far as the possibility of deliverance
from this Order of things appears, it is only through Union with
God—IN THE CHURCH”; something then happened—who can say what it
was—Amato turned—the woman had sunk back into her chair—her head lay
in her hands upon the table and she was sobbing. In an instant—so
rapid was he that his figure passing through the room might have
seemed almost moved by thought—Amato was kneeling at her side, his
hand pressed upon her shoulder. “Helen?” he said.
The face lifted—a smile broke through the tears—she stood up and drew
him to her—and then—she turned and left the room. Amato watched her
with his hands pressed to his breast; he looked towards Julieta—she
was fast asleep.
The next day the morning papers brought a new astonishment into
thousands of households throughout the New World. The Vatican had
been assaulted—an armed mob had invaded the gardens of the Pope’s
palace, and the Pope himself had retreated to St. Peter’s wherein
he was literally barricaded, while the troops of the state remained
on the defensive at its doors. The event in itself was astonishing
enough, but the most serious feature of the situation was the
temporizing, supine, almost approving policy of the government.
Catholics were terror stricken at the almost inconceivable
predicament. This news was received on Saturday.
The next morning at the Cathedral of St. Patrick’s, Cardinal Fenton
rose in the pulpit and to an enormous audience, among whom sat
Helen Lorimer and Amato, delivered a sermon of marvellous skill and
boldness. The note of defiance rose in it at times, to be succeeded
by invocations to the loyalty of believers, and to be followed
by denunciations of Europe as brutal, perverted sterilized, and
hopeless. Then came passages of extraordinary novelty. The speaker
dwelt upon the forlorn and debilitating position of the Church in
Europe—enveloped in a false civilization, of privilege, of title, of
social selfishness, turpitude, and callous heartlessness; he pointed
out the enfeebling influence of the association through centuries,
with the prejudices, misconceptions, and artificial structure of a
society that through interior decay presented only the glazed and
ornamented shell of civilization, and was decomposing into some final
product of sensuality and atheism.
Then he turned his contemplative gaze upon America, strong in its
immense material power, resolute in its support of its original
contentions in civic life, fortified beyond belief by the average
elevation of the masses who found in it peace, education, competence,
and opportunity. Yet here again the note of complete confidence
wavered and there was betrayed a deep misgiving. The recent
socialistic or anarchistic outbreak was analysed as the ebullition
of hatred and envy as also the symptom of a deep-seated disorder—the
false theory of the State as a collective organism with indisputably
no individualistic rights, a formless mass of industrial units,
animated by a vacuous sentiment of brotherhood, and destitute of the
power of real and vitalizing progress, because the Individual was
thwarted in his ambitions and denied his preeminence.
He paused a moment to dwell on popular vices, on indulgences,
on luxury, on the growth of pernicious habits, on the schism of
self-destruction, and then quoting an old author of the Nineteenth
Century—George Santayana—he proceeded “if a noble and civilized
democracy is to subsist, the common citizen must be something of a
saint and something of a hero. We see therefore how justly flattering
and profound and at the same time, how ominous was Montesquieu’s
saying that the Principle of Democracy is VIRTUE.”
From this point on to his peroration Cardinal Fenton pressed the
contention that the Church was indeed the safe-guard, and vindication
of Virtue; the terms he presented were inexorable, the consequences
of their rejection disastrous. But with again startling emphasis he
predicted the approach of the last conflict between Satan and God.
He urged upon grounds of sanity and strategy and experience that the
Church entrench herself, gathering in her forces, concentrating her
energy, establishing her prestige within the United States of America
where alone to-day, he concluded “her beauty is most ravishing and
irresistible, her efficacy most transcendental, her sanctuaries
most honored” and then in rushing winged sentences he plead for the
Translation of the Pope—of the Vicar of Christ—“to these western
shores where with the Faithful he shall yet defend this foot-stool of
the Most High against the swarming emissaries of Hell.”
The sermon was literally reproduced in the great dailies, indeed
printed copies of it were despatched over the entire country
throughout the larger cities, and in a moment, in the interval
between the setting of one sun and the rising of the next, the
reflective mind of the nation confronted an extraordinary proposition.
Censure, approval, comment and derision met it, but by some
psychological sequence, it became an absorbing and interesting
question that assumed greater and greater reality. Helen Lorimer’s
apathy vanished. She seized anew upon the discarded hope, and somehow
it worked harmoniously with her repudiation of the claim or plea
made in the Mayor’s book. The Pope established in America should be
the Sign—no other; in the displacement of his two thousand year’s
residence in Rome, in the abolition of an ancient glory, in the
new growth and sanctification of the Church in this free land—in
these things should be seen the Hand of God. Amato was no less
enthusiastic. He worked at the same problem and exerted all his art
and fluency to win converts.
The sensation caused by the Cardinal’s sermon was even greater
in Europe than in America where the custom of free speech was
recognized. Abroad its impact upon the formalized ears of the
dignitaries of the church was stunning. And yet there was no
resentment. Dismay and consternation spread, but not in remonstrance,
only in a heart breaking attitude of amazement that this extremity
should be so boldly risked. And deeply working, the leaven of this
suggestion—not unknown before to many, even well considered by many,
as we have seen in Amato’s report to the Cardinal—was converting the
heart of the POPE himself.
Suddenly there appeared a bull—_Ecclesia renovata et migratoria_—and
the edict was issued that the Pope would abandon Europe, walk out
of Rome, and transfer the seat of his See to the shores of America.
Amazing contradiction, when a few months before, this same procedure
had been anathematized. But Inconsistency is the secret of Progress.
The dilemma was sternly stated, the whole bull was minatory and yet,
in places it was tearful with lamentations, which in rolling Latin
had a most august solemnity. It was a moment of violent transition.
The bull, unannounced, unreviewed, calmly thrown into the faces of
the Propaganda, and the Congregation awoke no terrible opposition.
Cardinal Fenton by a stroke, had won. The position in Europe had
become unbearable. But it was an act of superb renouncement, of
stupendous humiliation; the emptying of its Glory by the Head of the
Church; the stripping bare to flesh and bone of the notorious and
priceless apparel which time, and devotion, and wealth, had dressed
him in; for it was ordained that He come to America as a Man among
men—a world-traveller seeking a new home, as of one who had nowhere
to lay his head. It was indeed a prostration, a vast penance, a
dislocation that at last severed the Church from its awful past, a
past superb in its spiritual conquests, but a past also black with
sins.
The house was made ready. It crowned the low hills of Staten Island.
Everything was provided by Helen Lorimer. She hastened every
preparation, with pride, with gayety, with love—for the pact had been
made between her and Amato that the Pope should marry them. At last
it seemed to Amato that the Mayor no longer ruled in her heart; the
conflict was quite passed, and he—he alone possessed her.
And the Pope came. He came in analogy with the whole wonderful and
incredible procedure. He came in conformity with just the requirement
which the jealous and suspicious temperament of the country he
visited, required. He came as a priest with priests, without pomp,
or retinue, or vestments. The affair had been anticipated with a
new delight by hundreds of thousands who rejoiced in sensations, in
spectacles, in violent surprises, in the climaxes of public events.
And it had been most curiously regarded by that protestant portion
of the society, which, a hundred years before, would have been
thrown into paroxysms of revolt, consternation, and rage, at the
mere thought of the transference of the Roman See to this country.
Now, at a time when spiritual power among their churches seemed so
near extinction, they hailed it with pleasure, with the most cordial
congratulations, and with actual endorsement. This very attitude had
been in a way expected by Cardinal Fenton, who saw how immensely it
ameliorated the abrupt Transition on both sides of the religious
fences.
The former of these groups—those who looked for some monumental
display of ceremony—was disappointed. It was all so quiet, so
informal, so commonplace, that except for its momentous moral
significance, it hardly stirred the surface of events with a
perceptible disturbance. Nothing could have been less phenomenal
or less memorable. Art and calculation had combined to make
its impression, as a physical event, almost imperceptible. But
the expatriation of the Pope was an extraordinary fact, and
no suppression of external show could minimize its stupendous
implications. It indeed marked a crisis in the religious life of the
whole world.
The Pope left Rome _incognito_, traversed France, embarked at
Havre, reached New York, was received by a committee, itself so
inconspicuously constituted, as scarcely to receive notice in the
public prints, and taken in a closed carriage to the modest mansion,
adjoining a small but beautiful chapel—the whole installation devised
by Helen Lorimer and Cardinal Fenton, and its expense wholly defrayed
by her—on the highest hill of Staten Island.
There was really something quite abnormal and disillusionizing
in it all. The Pope had even for the time divorced himself from
the appurtenances of his immense establishments. The Index, the
Inquisition, the Propaganda, the vast complicated machinery of
extension and distribution remained at Rome. The Pope alone appeared
at the threshold of the New World, coming without any artifice of
show and pageantry. It had something evangelical and primary about
it, and touched the imagination favorably. A wave of affection went
out to the prelate, and the absence of rebuke or injurious derision
marked a subtle influence propitious to the Cardinal’s project. The
personality of the Pope himself helped this delightful result. He
was charming, and tactful, and intellectually strong. He had already
said beautiful and true things about America. He had captured her
attention, and approval, long ago. Protestant bigotry restrained
itself, and the sightseers and the indifferent wondered, smiled
and applauded. It was all excellent throughout, and Pope Sextus
celebrated his first Mass in America without remonstrance, without
disturbance, almost without comment. He was indeed a Bernard of
Clairvaux.
Later the inevitable happened. That vast insatiable appetite for the
marvelous, and the recondite, and ritualistic, with its tremendous
possibilities of satisfaction, which the Catholic Church nurtured,
demanded its conditioning approval. It could only be given on one
assumption, that the resources gathered through ages of ceremonial
development, magnified by the most modern auxiliaries of light and
music should be employed to memorialize and establish the monstrous
revolution. Unless the seal of the Supernatural rested upon it, its
triumph would be temporary and crumbling. Thus, spontaneously and
together, the Catholic congregations throughout the country prepared
a glorious and stupifying Jubilee. In it the ardor of devotion,
the zeal of faith, and the pride of sect united with a discernible
prophetic instinct, to make it unparalleled. An incredible skill
controlled it. Cardinal Fenton and his agents were everywhere,
bringing the products of thought, of eloquence, of allusion, to be
inwrought and perpetuated through the myriad-tongued utterances of
its sermons and addresses. And in the midst of it with the most
thrilling nobility of style the POPE appeared at St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, as its cause and inspiration.
Pope Sextus was a peculiar man, shaped in a mould of mental, moral,
and physical perfection; perhaps the only Pope, that ever ruled the
Church, who could have taken this precarious step, a step threatening
such monstrous revulsions, and so inevitably endangered by collapse,
ridicule, the extinction of personal prestige as the Pope separated
himself from seclusion, and all the veils of splendid and historical
accidents. For once the MAN stood out before the world in the
habiliments of the street, as it were. He was not found at the end of
long corridors, mysteriously guarded by chamberlains and soldiers,
fixed beneath a canopy, and surrounded by the marvels of art. He
had abdicated all that, and his PRESENCE was in the open. It was an
ordeal, a shock that only the rarest combinations of qualities could
meet and survive. And the Pope met it and survived. This was the
magnificent fact that brought a profound ecstacy to Cardinal Fenton,
to Helen Lorimer, to Amato, and the leaders of this bold innovation.
But the Pope himself—he alone—made it possible.
A reporter of the New York Times, who attended the Pope’s Mass
at the Cathedral, thus described him: “The Pope seems young, but
that impression is dissipated when his bearing, action, voice, and
eloquence are considered. At first I could only think of the St.
Gabriel depicted by Guido where the young and stalwart archangel
descends with his sword upon the head of the falling Satan. His
type is certainly not blond, yet it is noticeably less dark than
the typical Italian. His hair is brown or chestnut, luxuriant, and
in light rolling waves surmounts a brow of fine proportions, in a
countenance of the most pronounced beauty. It is quite impossible to
describe the power of his eyes which appear always soft and tender,
and yet have a peculiar indefinable penetration. He is utterly apart
from the conventional pope, with a skull cap, and no hair, diaphanous
features, and the filminess of ascetic depletion, imparting to him a
ghostly sacredness. The Pope is probably fifty; the first impression
of youth is effaced as you watch him, and, above all, as you hear him.
“The service was a pontifical mass grandly rendered, the music
subdued, and full prominence was given to the celebrant, who was the
Pope himself. It was a lesson in the majesty and music of the human
voice. Never (and as a catholic I constantly attend mass), have I
heard singing so moving and ideal. But that again was forgotten, when
the superb figure—the Pope is tall—rose in the pulpit, and the same
entrancing voice preached from the Text; ‘Lo I am with you Always.’
“Here he was miraculous. His self assertion was most puzzling
but it was ineffaceable. He moved from appeals to historical
description, and from these to argument, and then decorating
everything with poetry, he threw all aside, and revealed himself as
The Vicar of Christ on Earth. It seemed appalling, the intensity
of his confidence, and yet more amazing it seemed convincing. As
he retreated to the altar, an anthem of Hayden’s broke forth in
delicate and joyous strains, its musical pulsations wavering over
the prostrate multitude, who were about to receive the Apostolic
Benediction while the subtler fragrance of the incense lingered
through the church, and the windows blazed their illuminated
suggestions of sacrifice and worship. As the dazed disciple said, it
‘seemed good to be there.’”
This hap-hazard reportorial encounter described correctly the feeling
created in the gigantic multitude that thronged the edifice. And all
this was followed by a most beautifully conceived Bull, issued from
Staten Island which, as with the finger of an act of transfiguration
rooted the Pope and the _Idea of the Pope forever_ in the New World.
And then rising with thrills and transports of pleasure from one
surprise to another, the staring populace of the great City-State
were invited to consider the marriage of Helen Lorimer to Rudolpho
Amato, celebrated by this same democratic and transported Pope. It
was a climax. It came at a moment of precise effectiveness. Never had
Miss Lorimer risen to a higher power for good than since the Mayor’s
death, and the end of the unsuccessful socialistic revolution. We
have already seen how her own class struggled—and honestly—to create
a beneficent and democratic aristocracy in the state. This was
continued. It was one of the dearest dreams of Helen herself. She
arranged and animated its advances. Her action in the defense of the
suspected but innocent men, caught at the fire of her Settlement
House, had given to her a renewed and an almost impregnable
popularity and vogue. And this was supplemented and augmented by
the splendid gift to the City of her completed Museum—completed
one year after the death of the Mayor, and on the anniversary of
the insurrection. The New Museum was placed exactly where the old
Settlement House had been.
It was a square building with a flat roof, and possessed seven
stories. The roof was fitted out for recreation, and its height
supplied a healthful and cool resort in the hot summer months; the
two floors below it were kept for meetings, classes, libraries,
and a _creche_ for working mothers. The remaining floors held the
Museum, and it was developed in the line of Helen’s own explanations
to the Mayor, in that first night of their meeting at her home. It
was an objectified Gazetteer, with more history, and more allusion,
and a mild didacticism interwoven. Civilizations were depicted, and
contrasted, and much of their forlornness was not forgotten, the
lesson of progressive betterments being shown, and that gradual
emancipation of the race from a debased selfishness, but the growth
of all such altruism was regarded—a little narrowly—as the fruit of
Christianity.
On that score Miss Lorimer would abate nothing. It was an unique and
most original spot, and so well imagined to combine pleasure, and
usefulness, and instruction, and help—for in its lower basement it
had a dispensatory—that it was instantly thronged. But Miss Lorimer
intended to attach to it a proprietary interest. No one could enter
it and use it but the Members of the Order Club. Everyone could
belong to this club, but its membership came under the scrutiny of
its directors, and they were elected. Every head of a Household paid
five cents a month for his family, and all others one cent. The
scheme worked well, and the people took a pride in it, and in their
memberships. Miss Lorimer endowed it, and put well paid curators in
it as well. Its expansion was further provided for.
It was the night before their wedding that Amato and Helen were
together in the great library of her home. The winter cold had
hastened somewhat, and the fireplace was filled with flaring logs.
They had been sitting together in front of this cheerful light. Helen
sat forward on her chair her face resting in her hands while her
arms rested on her knees and she looked into the ranked and flaming
wood-pile. Amato leaned far back in his chair and his eyes were on
her alone, their rapt and happy gaze changing at intervals into
brief smiles that parted the curved lips and made him more handsome.
For never had that extreme physical charm seemed fairer to him than
to-night. Helen had only just turned her bewildered glance from his
compelling beauty, as if she fled from its overpowering tyranny.
Amato was perhaps half conscious of his control, and that brought
into his eyes the rising and vanishing smile. But his slavery to the
beautiful woman was abject. There may have been just then the sense
of a vanquishing power which maintained his freedom and his mastery;
but in his heart he knew the relentless passion that desired and yet,
through the benignity of his mind’s higher insight, feared.
“Helen, can you see the future in those blazing embers? Tea-leaves
are better accredited among the sybils.” The voice was half mocking.
Helen laughed a little, and without turning to her companion
answered: “Sometimes I wonder whether we can give inanimate
things—when they are not altogether stocks and stones—some power born
of ourselves to tell us what we wish to know. Surely those burning
motes filled with fire, all their parts vibrating with motion, down
to their last atoms, might now be ready to respond to the tyrannous
demands of our souls.”
“But how will they answer?” the voice now betrayed some interest.
“Why, by pictures. They have no other power. We ourselves are the
Seers and we catch in them thrown outwards from our own divinations
the images of the things to come.”
“Like the Pythagorean who by looking formed the clay after the image
of his thought, or those less recondite magicians who tell your
fortune by a crystal sphere.”
“Ah! Rudolph you must not trifle; the pictures are symbols and they
are allusions only—not photographs of what you and I will do—” she
rose from her stooping position and laid her hand upon his, still
regarding the crumbling and reforming mirages of the fire;—“but
types, as now a flame, and now a star, and now the—Yes I see it—the
Cross—”.
“Helen are you one who ‘looks into the seeds of time and tells which
grain will grow and which will not?’”
“Why Rudolph, it sometimes seems to me as if our souls left us, were
like sensitive glasses feeling the approaching years with what they
hold, as the barometer, long before the storm or the fair weather,
falls or rises, responding so minutely to the changing pressure
around it.”
“O Love could you and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire?”
Amato leaned forward as he repeated the smooth lines, with his
voice tuned to the depth of his devotion for this woman, leaned
so far forward indeed that his cheek brushed against her own, and
then his hand was lifted and rested on her shoulder. She turned,
he slid forward to his knees on the floor before her. Their faces
were opposite each other, their eyes met, and then—almost with
violence—Amato leaped to his feet seized her hands, drew her up to
himself and crushed her lips with his own. She was plastic in his
arms, but there was no return of his frantic pressure.
He slowly relinquished his constraint, and a sudden pain wrote itself
in his face—it almost again seemed to him that that invisible
partition of the dead man’s memory yet divided them, very slightly
perhaps, but Love is so imperious, that the thought stabbed him like
a knife and Helen understood. She saw his pain—her words came to his
ears like music—such sweet blissful assurance—and yet—;
“No! No! Amato I love you—there is no reservation—” her voice
faltered, and tears sprang into her eyes: “We shall be happy—we shall
work—the greatness of human destiny will be for us a watchword for
endeavor—for all sorts of noble enterprises—”
It was her turn to rouse him—he stood looking at her wistfully,
thankfully—but somehow that deep egotism of the true lover craved
some greater personal surrender—Why now should designs of Work hide
HIM from her—was there not Love—Possession—at least for a little
while; let all else be forgotten, and the one personal act of Union
reign supreme.
He dropped her hands and laughed bitterly.
“Ah Helen—ever Work! Cannot I count for something?” the laugh
vanished—that tender boyish smile, so beguiling and winning came
into his eyes and his mouth parted. Helen Lorimer saw it all now—and
the revelation, pointing so deeply to the unsatisfied longing,
the quenchless thirst for surrender and temporal oblivion, lit up
within her a strange wonderful delight. She flung her arms about
Amato’s neck, she nestled her head upon his shoulder, she sought
his mouth with her lips, and in the flood—the tide running fast and
unrestrained—of joy, as if a touch had liberated imprisoned waters,
the two lost all reference to the Future—one abounding, mastering,
remorselessly ecstatic PRESENT held them wedded in mind, in heart, in
soul.
Six months later an official ceremony sealed this voiceless pact.
It was a glorious wedding. Such a nuptial splendor had never before
been seen in New York. Cardinal Fenton intended that it should be
made tributary to his own designs; it certainly accentuated again
the fact of the new Presence in America—the Pope’s. It was held at
dawn. The long procession of carriages from Carrara was resplendently
conceived. They were lit with oil torches, and, along the avenues
they passed, arches of lights and welcoming discharges of rockets
administered a civic public note that was unmistakable. Agreeable
to Helen Lorimer’s orders largess, in forms of banquets, gifts and
endowments had incorporated the whole great city in this noble
function. The Cathedral of St. Patrick’s was encrusted with light,
from arch and fret and angle the electric coronas sent their rays,
and at its entrance the Pope’s Arms deftly interwoven with the Eagle
and the Flag of the States surmounted a flashing arch of lights,
and, more ominously to some, above these shone the escutcheon of the
City-State.
Within the sacred structure the spectacle was a ravishing picture
of color and coruscation. Climbing coils of light terminating in
pendent colored globes, lined the central aisle, the altar dressed
to its very summit with roses sparkled also with lights; enormous
candles burned within the sanctuary, the thrones of the Pope and the
Cardinal were opposite each other and each was a hill of lilies.
The Pope celebrated the Nuptial Mass and awaited at the altar the
slow progress of the bridal procession which was itself a vision of
beauty. Priests and acolytes, in swaying groups surrounded the Pope
and the Cardinal.
Helen had wished to embody again her generous emotions in this
great act of her life. One of the lovely and touching features of
the bridal train was the presence of fifty little girls from the
East Side, and as many boys carrying chains of flowers, chosen
protegees from her many foundations of charity. In the centre of
this escort Helen, with her twelve bridesmaids, accompanied only by
her Mother Julieta, approached. Rudolph awaited her at the steps of
the Communion Rail supported by his company of groomsmen, while
through the huge temple of worship the music and the chorus of the
Lohengrün Wedding March breathed its festive melodies. The curious
archaic custom of enclosing the bride and bridegroom in the nuptial
cloth was observed, and when at last the rite was consummated the
blessing given by the transported Pope, the recessional begun to the
accompaniment of a full orchestra playing Mendelssohn’s Spring Song,
while three thousand guests watched and wondered—it truly seemed as
if the Great City was about to enter itself upon some new chapter of
development wherein should be seen again, in closer conflict, the
allied strength of Helen Lorimer’s beneficent Democracy of Wealth
and the Hierarchy of the Church, against the Lust of Life and the
disintegrating agitations of Socialism.
Was it auspicious that as Rudolph assisted Helen, and her Mother, to
the equipage, of which he was now an occupant, that the risen Sun of
the May morning shone brightly, and that throngs in the streets burst
into cheers?
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Inconsistent punctuation has been left unchanged while typographical
errors, hyphenation inconsistencies and numerous spelling errors have
been silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences
within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below archaic usage has been retained.
Page 28 “it was called—the region-Carrara” changed to “it was
called—the region—Carrara”
Page 213 “It was a pet theory of the Cardinals” changed to “It was
a pet theory of the Cardinal’s”