"You have your opportunity," He said to His Eminency.
"And one will not repeat one's previous mistake, Holiness," was the remarkable and thankful reply.
"No, for mercy's sake, don't. And now listen. The Treasurer will pay you on this order the sum of £10,500. You will invest it in the Bank of England on these terms. The transaction is to be secret. The interest on £10,000 is to be paid quarterly to William Jameson as long as he lives. On his death the capital is to revert to the Treasurer for the time being of the Apostolic See. Instruct the bank instantly to send £500 and the vouchers to Jameson, with a statement that it is his patrimony; and to give him no further information."
Then Hadrian shut-up Himself and rested, smoking and reading the Reviews of Unwritten Books in some old numbers of the Monthly Review. One of them caused Him to think. It was called Thucydides' Report of Pericles' Oration at the Incoronation of King Edward the Seventh.
CHAPTER XV
Jerry Sant gnawed his rag of a moustache for a fortnight or so, till it was dripping and jagged. He began to have a notion that Mrs. Crowe would like to have him elsewhere. That did not disturb him: for he knew that he always could compel her services, when he wanted them, by means of a pull on the purse-strings. The mildly elegant exiguity of the circle in which she moved, had no attraction for him. There were not many saxpences there; and he felt out of his depth in a company which he could not lead by the nose. "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." He knew himself to be "a one-eyed man"; and, in the kingdom of the Liblabs, he naturally had been one of the kings. Here, among the English and Keltic Catholics in Rome, he was no more than tolerated—and awfully worried by people who offered him tracts, of which, for the life of him, he could make neither head nor tail. Further he really seriously was annoyed that the Pope had not accepted his handsome offer—had not even answered his letter. He thought it most rude. It is a fatal and futile thing to leave letters unanswered, especially impertinent letters. Silence does not "choke off": in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it breeds bile which is bound to be spurted sooner or later. It is a poor kind of a man who cannot indite a letter which is a guillotine, a closure about which there can be no possible mistake. By this means, uncertainty and its vile consequences are prevented. Hadrian perfectly knew how to deliver Himself. His faculty for finding-out other people's thumb-screws had provided Him with blasting powder, if He had desired to be dynamic; and He possessed Bishop Bagshawe's celebrated three-line formula, which never has been known to fail of throttling an importunate correspondent. But He no more could have touched Sant, even with a letter, than He could have touched tripe with tongs. His feeling for the man was ultimate antipathy, which led Him to commit the common error of ignoring what ought to have been annihilated. Hence Sant's sense of spleen. Finally Jerry had the Liblabs to keep quiet. Those extraordinary persons were asking for something definite in the shape of news; and he had no news at all to give them. That was the worst of it. Soon, some treachery or other would be hatched against him behind his back, in the most approved Liblab manner: he would be asked for explanations, for a statement of accounts: he would be hauled over the coals, and so on:—oh he obviously could not let it come to that. He must make a fresh effort. The time had come for playing his next card. And for three days he sat at the Hotel Nike, writing press-copy.
It was the Cardinal-Secretary-of-State who did himself the pleasure of acquainting the Holy Father with the result of Jerry Sant's manœuvre. His Eminency, on the whole, never had had a more congenial duty to perform in all his life. He swirled into the Presence one evening at dusk when Hadrian was waiting for the lamps, sitting by the undraped window watching the dark figures passing over the grey square and the specks of yellow light springing in the houses of the Borgo. Ragna brought a newspaper which he thrust into the Pope's hands.
"See what a scoundrel you are!" he truculently snarled. "Fly! All is discovered! The Catholic Hour is exposing you finely!"