(I)
Monsignor Masterman sat in his room at Westminster, busy at his correspondence.
A week had passed since his return, and he had made extraordinary progress. Even his face showed it. The piteous, bewildered look that he had worn, as he first realized little by little how completely out of touch he was with the world in which he had found himself after his lapse of memory, had wholly disappeared; and in its place was the keen, bright-eyed intelligence of a typical ecclesiastic. It was not that his memory had returned. Still, behind his sudden awakening in Hyde Park, all was a misty blank, from which faces and places and even phrases started out, for the most part unverifiable. Yet it seemed both to him and to those about him that he had an amazing facility in gathering up the broken threads. He had spent three or four days, after his return from Lourdes, closeted in private with Father Jervis or the Cardinal, and had found himself at last capable of readmitting his secretaries and of taking up his work again. The world in general had been informed of his nervous breakdown, so that on the few occasions when he seemed to suffer small lapses of memory no great surprise was felt.
He found, of course, a state of affairs that astonished him enormously. For example, he discovered that as the Cardinal's secretary he was an extremely important person in the country. He had not yet ventured much on private interviews—these were for the present chiefly conducted by the Cardinal, with himself present; but his correspondence showed him that his good word was worth having, even by men who were foremost in the government of the day. There was, for instance, an immense amount of work to be done on the subject of the relations of Church and State; for the Church, it must be remembered, while not actually established, stood for the whole religious sentiment of the country, and must be consulted on every measure of importance. There was, further, the matter of the restoration of Church property not yet finally concluded in all its details, with endless adjustments and compensations still under discussion. This morning it was on the University question that he was chiefly engaged, and particularly the question as to the relative numbers of the lay and clerical Fellows on the old Catholic foundations.
* * * * *
A bell struck a single note; and one of his secretaries, sitting at the broad table near the window, lifted the receiver to his ear. Then he turned.
"His Eminence wishes to have a word with you, Monsignor, on two matters."
Monsignor stood up.
"I'll come now, if it's convenient," he said. "I have to be at
Westminster at twelve."
The secretary spoke again through the telephone.