(II)
The two said nothing as they went out through the dimly lighted hall. Overhead hung the old banners in the high wooden roof; a great fire blazed on the hearth; and under the musician's gallery at the farther end they saw the bright little window behind which sat the secretary.
They stopped here and peered in.
He was seated with his back to them before an instrument not altogether unlike an old-fashioned organ. A long row of black keys was in front of him; and half a dozen stops protruded on either side. Before him, in the front, a glass panel protected some kind of white sheet; and as the priest looked in he could see a movement as of small bluish sparks playing upon this. He had long ago made up his mind not to attempt to understand modern machinery; and he had no kind of idea what all this meant, beyond a guess that the keys were for sending messages, and the white sheet for receiving them.
"Any news?" said the General suddenly.
The secretary did not move or answer. His hands were before him, hidden, and he appeared entirely absorbed.
It must have been a minute before he turned round, drawing out as he did so from before him a slip of paper like those he had already brought in.
"This is from Rye, sir," he said shortly. "They too have lost communication with Parliament Square. That is all, sir. I must take this in at once."
The two passed on, still without speaking; and it was not until they were going slowly up the long covered staircase that ran inside the skirting wall that connected the keep with the more modern part of the castle that Monsignor began——
"I'm very ignorant," he said. "Can you tell me the possibilities?"
The General paused before answering.
"Well," he said, "the worst possibility is a riot, engineered by the Socialists. If that is successful, it means a certain delay of at least several years; and, at the worst, it means that the Socialists will increase enormously throughout Europe. And then anything may happen."
"But I thought that all real danger was past, and that the
Socialists were discredited."
"Certainly, in one sense. In every country, that is to say, they are in a negligible minority. But if all these minorities are added together, they are not negligible at all. The Cabinet has produced this Bill suddenly, as of course you know, in order to prevent any large Continental demonstration, as this would certainly have a tremendous effect upon England. But it seems that they've been organizing for months. They must have known this was coming . . ."
"And if the Socialists fail?"
"Well, then they'll make their last stand in Germany. But you know this better than I do, Monsignor?"
"I know a good deal here and there," confessed the other; "but I find it hard sometimes to combine it all. I had an illness, you know——"
"Ah, yes; yes."
They paused for breath in an embrasure in the wall, where a section of a half-tower supported the wall, itself running down on to the cliff side. A couple of windows gave a view of the sea, now a dark gulf under the cloudy sky, sprinkled with a few moving lights, here and there, of vessels going up or down the Channel.
"And suppose the Bill passes?" began the priest.
"If the Bill passes, we need fear nothing in England if it passes with a good majority. You know Government is an extraordinarily delicate machine nowadays; and if the Bill goes through really well, it'll be an infallible sign that the country refuses to take alarm. And if it fails, or only narrowly passes—well, it'll be the other way. The whole work will have to be done again, or at least begun——"
He faced round suddenly.
"Monsignor," he said, "I wouldn't say this to everyone. But I tell you we're at a very critical moment. These Socialists are stronger than any one dreamed. Their organization is simply perfect. Do you know any of them?"
"I have met Hardy."
"That's a brilliant man, you know."
They talked no more during the rest of the ascent, until they emerged at last on to the top of the round keep, where the old bonfires used to burn, and where the old iron cradle, used even now at coronations and great national events, still thrust up its skeleton silhouette against the pale sky. To the priest's surprise the silhouette was largely filled in.
A figure came towards them, saluted, and stood waiting.
"Eh? Who's this?" snapped the General.
"The look out, sir. We've orders to watch Rye."
"Why?"
"The wireless is out of communication, sir. His lordship arranged a week ago that there should be supplementary rockets."
"Where are the guns?" asked Monsignor, who was looking about him, at the empty leads, the battlemented parapet against the sky, and then back at the servant's figure.
"Down below, father. They're to be fired from here if three white rockets go up."
While the two others still talked, the priest went to the side and looked over, again suddenly overwhelmed by the strangeness of the whole position. Once again there came on him the sense of irresponsible unreality. . . . He stared out, hardly seeing that on which he looked: the grey mass of the lower castle beneath with lighted windows, at the blankness beyond, again with the scattered lights—the nearer ones, within what seemed a stone's throw, along the village street—the farther ones, infinitely remote, out upon the invisible sea. There again too, far off across the land, shone another cluster of lights, seen rather as a luminous patch, that marked Rye. There too, eyes were watching; there too it was felt that interests were at stake, so vast and so unknown, that heaven or hell might be within their limits. He looked inland, and there too was darkness, but darkness unrelieved. Near at hand, immediately below the bounding walls, rose up the dark swelling outlines that he knew to be the woods of the park, crowding up against the very castle walls themselves; and beyond, dimness after dimness, to meet the sky. . . .
It seemed to him incredible, as he looked, that things of such moment should be under way, somewhere beyond that sleeping country; and yet, as his eyes grew accustomed to the night, he could make out at last a faint glow in the sky to the north that marked the outskirts of that enormous city of which he was a citizen, where such matters even now were approaching a decision.
For it was only little by little that he had become aware that a real crisis was at hand. The Cardinal had told him the facts, indeed, in the dispassionate, tolerant manner that was characteristic of him; but the point of view necessary to take them in as a coherent whole, to see them, not as isolated events, but with the effect of the past upon them and their hidden implications and probabilities for the future—this needed that the observer should be of the temper and atmosphere of the time. For prophecy just now was little better than feeling at outlines in the dark. Facts could be discerned and apprehended by all—and the priest was well aware of his own capacities in this—but their interpretation was another matter altogether. . . . He felt helpless and puzzled. . . .
The General came towards him.
"Well," he said, "anything to be seen?"
"Nothing."
"We may as well make our way down again. There's nothing to be gained by stopping here."
As they made their way down again through the covered passage, the General once more began to talk about the crisis.
Monsignor had heard it all before; but he listened for all that. It seemed to him worth while to collect opinions; and this soldier's very outspoken remarks cast a sort of sharp clarity upon the situation that the priest found useful. The establishment of the Church in England was being regarded on the Continent as a kind of test case; and even more by the Anglo-Saxon countries throughout the world. In itself it was not so vast a step forward as might be thought. It would make no very radical changes in actual affairs, since the Church already enjoyed enormous influence and complete liberty. But the point was that it was being taken as a kind of symbol by both sides; and this explained on the one hand the tactics of the Government in bringing it suddenly forward, and the extraordinary zeal with which the Socialists were demonstrating against it.
"The more I think of it," said the General, "the more——"
Monsignor stepped suddenly aside into the embrasure at which they had halted on the way up.
"What's the matter?"
"I thought I saw——"
The General uttered a sharp exclamation, pressing his head over the priest's shoulder.
"That's the second," whispered the priest harshly.
Together they waited, staring out together through the tall, narrow window that looked towards Rye.
Then for the third time there rose against the far-off horizon, above that faint peak of luminosity that marked where Rye watched over her marshes, a thin line of white fire, slackening its pace as it rose.
Before it had burst in sparks, there roared out overhead a deafening voice of fire and thunder, shaking the air about them, bewildering the brain. Then another. Then another.
Beneath the two as they stood, shaking with the shock, silent and open-mouthed, staring at one another, in the courtyard a door banged; then another; and then a torrent of voices and footsteps as the servants and grooms poured out of the lower doors.
(III)
Two hours later the two ecclesiastics sat together, on either side of the large table in the Cardinal's room. The Cardinal passed over the sheets one by one as he finished them. One set was being brought straight up here from the little office at the end of the hall. Another set, they knew, was simultaneously being read aloud by Lord Southminster in the hall below.
The guns had aroused even the most drowsy; and the whole population, village as well as castle, had poured into the courtyard to hear the news.
Monsignor sat and read sheet after sheet after his chief, hopelessly trying to notice and remember the principal points of the report. Everything was recorded there—the assembling of the crowds, the difficulty that the later members found in getting through into the House at all; the breakdown of the police arrangements; and the storming of the wireless station by an organized mob, many of whom had been later put under arrest.
Then there was the Prime Minister's speech, recorded word by word in the machines, and translated later, by machinery instead of by human labour, into terms of dots and dashes, themselves transmitted again over miles of country, and retranslated again by mechanical devices into these actual printed sheets that the two were reading.
The speech was given in full, down to that tremendous scene when half the House, distracted at last by the cries that grew nearer and nearer, and the messengers that appeared and reappeared from outside, had risen to its feet. And then——
The Cardinal leaned back suddenly, with a swift indrawing of his breath that was almost the first sign of emotion that he had shown.
Monsignor looked up. The last two sheets were still under the ringed hand that lay upon the table.
"Well, it's done," said the Cardinal softly, almost as if talking to himself. "But it needed his last card."
"Your Eminence?"
"The announcement as to the East," went on the other, with the same air. "I thank God it came in time."
"Your Eminence, I don't understand."
The Cardinal looked at him full.
"Why," he said, "the Holy Father was accepted as Arbitrator of the
East by the united Powers this morning. The news was in the Prime
Ministers hands at six o'clock. But I'm sorry he had to use it; it
would have been stronger without. . . . Don't you understand,
Monsignor? The House would have refused to vote otherwise."
"But it's finished—it's finished, isn't it, your Eminence?"
"Yes, yes, it's finished. Or had we better say it's begun. Now the last conflict begins. . . . Now, Monsignor, I'm afraid I must begin to dictate. Would you mind setting the phonographs?"
* * * * *
From the hall beneath rose a sudden confusion of cheering and stamping of feet.