Dawn of All - Robert Hugh Benson (the read aloud family txt) 📗

if from the depths of a bottomless hit, faint and minute; and then, quite distinctly, three strokes of a bell.

The Cardinal nodded.

"They are starting," he said. "They have kept us long enough."

He slipped along the seat to where his scarlet cincture and cap lay, and began to put these on.

Monsignor sprang across and lifted down the great Roman cloak from its peg.

"You had better get ready yourself," said the Cardinal. "They will be here in a moment."

As the priest slipped on his second shoe, a sound suddenly stopped him dead for an instant. It was the sound of voices talking somewhere beneath in the fog. Then he finished, and stood up, just as there slid cautiously upwards, like a whale coming up to breathe, past the window by which the Cardinal was now standing cloaked and hatted, first a shining roof, then a row of little ventilators, and finally a line of windows against which a dozen faces were pressed. He saw them begin to stir as the scarlet of the Cardinal met their eyes.

"We can sit down again," said the old man, smiling. "The rest is a matter for the engineers."

It seemed strange afterwards to the priest how little real or active terror he felt. He was conscious of a certain sickly sensation, and of a sourish taste on his lips, as he licked them from time to time; but scarcely more than this, except perhaps of a sudden shivering spasm that shook him once or twice as the fog-laden breeze poured in upon him.

He sat there watching through the windows in a kind of impassivity, as much as he could see of the method by which the racing-boat was attached by long, rigid rods to the steady floating raft that had risen from beneath. (He was even interested to observe that these rigid rods were of telescopic design, and were elongated from their own interiors. One of them pushed forward once to within a foot of the windows; then the tapering end seemed to fall apart into two hooked ends, singularly like a lean finger and thumb with roughened surfaces. This, in its turn, rose out of sight, and he heard it slide along the roof overhead, till it caught some projection and there clenched.)

So the process went on, slowly and deliberately. The driver still remained at his post, answering once or twice questions put to him from some invisible person outside. The Cardinal still sat, motionless and silent, on the opposite seat. Then, after perhaps ten minutes' delay, a sensation of descending became perceptible.

His fear, such as it was, took a new form, as presently through the thinning fog he became aware that the earth was approaching. The first clear indication of this was the sound of a clock striking. He counted the strokes carefully, and immediately forgot what it was that he had counted. Then, as he watched with straining eyes for buildings or towers to make their appearance, the movement stopped; there was a faint jarring sensation, then the sound of trampling feet, then a heavy shock. He had forgotten that stages were used.

The Cardinal stood up.

"Come, Monsignor," he said, and gave his hand to him.

So the two stood a moment longer. Then the footsteps sounded on the boat; a shadow fell across the glass of the stern-door. The door opened, letting in a rush of foggy air, and two men in uniform came swiftly inside.

"Your name and your business, gentlemen?" said the foremost shortly, in excellent English.

"I am come on behalf of the Holy Father," said the Cardinal steadily. "My name is Cardinal Bellairs. This is my secretary, Monsignor Masterman. He is not an envoy."

"Exactly," said the man. "That is all in order. You were seen by our guard-boats. Will you step this way?"

A bridge had been thrown across from the raft to the racing-boat, and the latter was now attached to an immense stage whose sides ran down into the fog. The stage-platform was crowded with men, some in official uniform, some in blouses; but a way was kept clear for the visitors, and they passed across without any actual show of hostility or resentment. Monsignor noticed but one detail--that no salutation of any kind was given; and as they took their seats in the lift, with the two officials close beside them, he heard guttural conversation break out, and, he thought, one loud laugh. The doors were latched, and the lift dropped.

The speed was so great that it would have been impossible to see anything of the town into which they descended, even had the fog been absent. As it was, Monsignor saw nothing except the sudden darkening of the air round them. Then as the speed slackened he saw the side of some great building not twenty yards away. Then the lift stopped and the doors were opened.

A group of men stood there, with something of an expectant air in their stolid faces. All these were in uniform of some description; one stood a little in advance of the rest and held a paper in his hand.

"Cardinal Bellairs?" he said, also in English. "And Monsignor Masterman?"

The Cardinal bowed.

"We had information from Rome last night. I understand you have a communication from the Powers?"

"From the Holy Father, whom the European Powers have appointed to represent them."

"It is the same thing," said the man brusquely. "The Council are waiting to receive you. Kindly follow me."

The official who had brought them down stepped forward.

"I understand, sir, that this gentleman" (he indicated the priest) "is not an envoy."

"Is that so?" asked the other.

"It is."

"Very good. I only have authority to introduce the envoy. Monsignor Masterman will be good enough to follow the other gentleman. Your Eminence, will you come with me?"


(VI)

On looking back afterwards on the whole experience, that which stood out as most shocking in it all, to the priest's mind, was the abominable speed with which the tragedy was accomplished. It was merciful, perhaps, that it was so, for even the half-hour or so which elapsed before the priest had any more news dragged itself to an intolerable length.

He walked up and down the little furnished room--some kind of parlour, he understood, attached to a government building seized by the revolutionaries, guarded, he knew, by a couple of men in the passage, whose voices he occasionally heard--in a sort of dull agony, far more torturing than positive objective fear.

He tried to comfort himself by retelling to himself the story of the last few days; reminding himself how, after the first outburst, when the police had been shot down by these new weapons of which he understood nothing, and the palace had been taken, and the city reduced to a state of defenceless terror--the revolutionaries had sternly repressed the second attempted massacre in a manner not unworthy of real civilization.

A great deal of the whole story was unintelligible to him. He just knew the outlines. First, it was obvious that the revolution had been planned in all its details months before. There had been, soon after the Emperor's conversion, a great access of other converts, accompanied by a dispersal to other countries, notably America, of innumerable people of the lower classes who were known as Socialists. All this was looked upon by the authorities as natural, and as actually reassuring. There had been a few protests against the new proposals with regard to legislation; but not enough to rouse any suspicion that violence would be attempted. Finally, when the organized emigration was beginning, and even the most pessimistic politicians were beginning to regard the situation as saved, without the slightest warning the blow had been struck, obviously by the directions of an international council whose very existence had not been suspected.

As to the details of the revolution itself he was even more vague, for the understanding of it depended on an acquaintance with the internal arrangements of Berlin, by which a kind of interior citadel, not outwardly fortified in any way, yet held in its compass all those immense "power-stations" by which, in the present day, every town was defended. (He did not know exactly what these "power-stations" were, beyond the fact that they were the lineal successors of the old gun-forts, and controlled an immense number of mines both within the city and without it, as well as some kind of "electric ray," which was the modern substitute for cannon.) Well, it was this "citadel," including the Emperor's palace, that had been suddenly seized by the revolutionaries, obviously by the aid of treachery. And the thing was done. It was impossible for the other Powers, or even for the German air-navy itself, to wipe the whole place out of existence, since it was known that the Emperor himself was in the hands of the rebels. (It was a bald story, as he had heard it; yet he reflected that great coups usually were extremely and unexpectedly simple.)

Finally, there were the terms demanded--terms which the Powers were unanimous in rejecting, since they included the formal disestablishment of the Church throughout Europe and the complete liberty of the Press, with guarantees that these should continue. The alternative to the acceptance of these terms was the execution of the Emperor and formal war declared upon Europe--a war which, of course, could have but one ending, but which, until that end came, would mean, under the new conditions of warfare, an almost unimaginable destruction of life and property, especially since (as was known) the Socialists repudiated all the international laws of warfare. The defiance was, of course, a ridiculous and a desperate one, but it was the defiance of a savage child who held all modern resources in his hands and knew how to use them. There was also possible, as some said, a rising all over the civilized world, should the movement meet with success.

So much, in brief, was what Monsignor Masterman knew. So much, indeed, was now public property all the world over, and it was not reassuring.

Certainly he feared death for himself; yet, as he paced up and down, he could honestly and sincerely tell himself that this was not foremost in his mind. Rather it was a sense of bewildered shock and horror that such things could have broken in upon that orderly, disciplined world with which he had become familiar. It was this horror that hung over him--its impression deepened by the bleak April morning, the nervous strain under which he suffered, the brusque discourtesy of the men who had received him, and the knowledge that scarcely thirty-six hours before an envoy who had come alone and peaceably had been done to death in this silent city. And the horror also centred for him now, as in a symbol, in the old Cardinal whom he was learning to love.

He framed, as men do when the imagination is stimulated to the highest pitch, a dozen possible events--each seen by him mentally, clear, in a picture. He constructed for himself the Cardinal's return with news of a compromise, with an announcement at least of delay. (He knew a few of the proposals that were to be made by sanction of the Pope.) Or he saw him coming back, anxious and perturbed, with nothing decided. Or he imagined himself being sent for in haste. . . . And there were other pictures, more terrible; and against these he strove with all his will, telling himself that it was inconceivable that such things should be. Yet not one of his imaginings was as terrible as