Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson (top 10 novels to read .txt) 📕

sacred ministers---"

"Eh?"

Mr. Francis permitted a slight grimace to appear on his face; he flushed a little.

"The President of Europe---" He broke off. "Ah! that is the point. Will the President take part? That is not made clear in the ritual."

"We think so," said Oliver. "He is to be approached."

"Well, if not, I suppose the Minister of Public Worship will officiate. He with his supporters pass straight up to the foot of the altar. Remember that the figure is still veiled, and that the candles have been lighted during the approach of the procession. There follow the Aspirations printed in the ritual with the responds. These are sung by the choir, and will be most impressive, I think. Then the officiant ascends the altar alone, and, standing, declaims the Address, as it is called. At the close of it--at the point, that is to say, marked here with a star, the thurifers will leave the chapel, four in number. One ascends the altar, leaving the others swinging their thurifers at its foot--hands his to the officiant and retires. Upon the sounding of a bell the curtains are drawn back, the officiant tenses the image in silence with four double swings, and, as he ceases the choir sings the appointed antiphon."

He waved his hands.

"The rest is easy," he said. "We need not discuss that."

To Mabel's mind even the previous ceremonies seemed easy enough. But she was undeceived.

"You have no idea, Mrs. Brand," went on the ceremoniarius, "of the difficulties involved even in such a simple matter as this. The stupidity of people is prodigious. I foresee a great deal of hard work for us all.... Who is to deliver the discourse, Mr. Brand?"

Oliver shook his head.

"I have no idea," he said. "I suppose Mr. Snowford will select."

Mr. Francis looked at him doubtfully.

"What is your opinion of the whole affair, sir?" he said.

Oliver paused a moment.

"I think it is necessary," he began. "There would not be such a cry for worship if it was not a real need. I think too--yes, I think that on the whole the ritual is impressive. I do not see how it could be bettered...."

"Yes, Oliver?" put in his wife, questioningly.

"No--there is nothing--except ... except I hope the people will understand it."

Mr. Francis broke in.

"My dear sir, worship involves a touch of mystery. You must remember that. It was the lack of that that made Empire Day fail in the last century. For myself, I think it is admirable. Of course much must depend on the manner in which it is presented. I see many details at present undecided--the colour of the curtains, and so forth. But the main plan is magnificent. It is simple, impressive, and, above all, it is unmistakable in its main lesson---"

"And that you take to be--?"

"I take it that it is homage offered to Life," said the other slowly. "Life under four aspects--Maternity corresponds to Christmas and the Christian fable; it is the feast of home, love, faithfulness. Life itself is approached in spring, teeming, young, passionate. Sustenance in midsummer, abundance, comfort, plenty, and the rest, corresponding somewhat to the Catholic Corpus Christi; and Paternity, the protective, generative, masterful idea, as winter draws on.... I understand it was a German thought."

Oliver nodded.

"Yes," he said. "And I suppose it will be the business of the speaker to explain all this."

"I take it so. It appears to me far more suggestive than the alternative plan--Citizenship, Labour, and so forth. These, after all, are subordinate to Life."

Mr. Francis spoke with an extraordinary suppressed enthusiasm, and the priestly look was more evident than ever. It was plain that his heart at least demanded worship.

Mabel clasped her hands suddenly.

"I think it is beautiful," she said softly, "and--and it is so real."

Mr. Francis turned on her with a glow in his brown eyes.

"Ah! yes, madam. That is it. There is no Faith, as we used to call it: it is the vision of Facts that no one can doubt; and the incense declares the sole divinity of Life as well as its mystery."

"What of the figures?" put in Oliver.

"A stone image is impossible, of course. It must be clay for the present. Mr. Markenheim is to set to work immediately. If the figures are approved they can then be executed in marble."

Again Mabel spoke with a soft gravity.

"It seems to me," she said, "that this is the last thing that we needed. It is so hard to keep our principles clear--we must have a body for them--some kind of expression---"

She paused.

"Yes, Mabel?"

"I do not mean," she went on, "that some cannot live without it, but many cannot. The unimaginative need concrete images. There must be some channel for their aspirations to flow through--- Ah! I cannot express myself!"

Oliver nodded slowly. He, too, seemed to be in a meditative mood.

"Yes," he said. "And this, I suppose, will mould men's thoughts too: it will keep out all danger of superstition."

Mr. Francis turned on him abruptly.

"What do you think of the Pope's new Religious Order, sir?"

Oliver's face took on it a tinge of grimness.

"I think it is the worst step he ever took--for himself, I mean. Either it is a real effort, in which case it will provoke immense indignation--or it is a sham, and will discredit him. Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering whether any disturbance will be made in the abbey."

"I should be sorry for the brawler."

A bell rang sharply from the row of telephone labels. Oliver rose and went to it. Mabel watched him as he touched a button--mentioned his name, and put his ear to the opening.

"It is Snowford's secretary," he said abruptly to the two expectant faces. "Snowford wants to--ah!"

Again he mentioned his name and listened. They heard a sentence or two from him that seemed significant.

"Ah! that is certain, is it? I am sorry.... Yes.... Oh! but that is better than nothing.... Yes; he is here.... Indeed. Very well; we will be with you directly."

He looked on the tube, touched the button again, and came back to them.

"I am sorry," he said. "The President will take no part at the Feast. But it is uncertain whether he will not be present. Mr. Snowford wants to see us both at once, Mr. Francis. Markenheim is with him."

But though Mabel was herself disappointed, she thought he looked graver than the disappointment warranted.


CHAPTER V

I


Percy Franklin, the new Cardinal-Protector of England, came slowly along the passage leading from the Pope's apartments, with Hans Steinmann, Cardinal-Protector of Germany, blowing at his side. They entered the lift, still in silence, and passed out, two splendid vivid figures, one erect and virile, the other bent, fat, and very German from spectacles to flat buckled feet.

At the door of Percy's suite, the Englishman paused, made a little gesture of reverence, and went in without a word.

A secretary, young Mr. Brent, lately from England, stood up as his patron came in.

"Eminence," he said, "the English papers are come."

Percy put out a hand, took a paper, passed on into his inner room, and sat down.

There it all was--gigantic headlines, and four columns of print broken by startling title phrases in capital letters, after the fashion set by America a hundred years ago. No better way even yet had been found of misinforming the unintelligent.

He looked at the top. It was the English edition of the Era. Then he read the headlines. They ran as follows:

"THE NATIONAL WORSHIP. BEWILDERING SPLENDOUR. RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM. THE ABBEY AND GOD. CATHOLIC FANATIC. EX-PRIESTS AS FUNCTIONARIES."

He ran his eyes down the page, reading the vivid little phrases, and drawing from the whole a kind of impressionist view of the scenes in the Abbey on the previous day, of which he had already been informed by the telegraph, and the discussion of which had been the purpose of his interview just now with the Holy Father.

There plainly was no additional news; and he was laying the paper down when his eye caught a name.

"It is understood that Mr. Francis, the ceremoniarius (to whom the thanks of all are due for his reverent zeal and skill), will proceed shortly to the northern towns to lecture on the Ritual. It is interesting to reflect that this gentleman only a few months ago was officiating at a Catholic altar. He was assisted in his labours by twenty-four confreres with the same experience behind them."

"Good God!" said Percy aloud. Then he laid the paper down.

But his thoughts had soon left this renegade behind, and once more he was running over in his mind the significance of the whole affair, and the advice that he had thought it his duty to give just now upstairs.

Briefly, there was no use in disputing the fact that the inauguration of Pantheistic worship had been as stupendous a success in England as in Germany. France, by the way, was still too busy with the cult of human individuals, to develop larger ideas.

But England was deeper; and, somehow, in spite of prophecy, the affair had taken place without even a touch of bathos or grotesqueness. It had been said that England was too solid and too humorous. Yet there had been extraordinary scenes the day before. A great murmur of enthusiasm had rolled round the Abbey from end to end as the gorgeous curtains ran back, and the huge masculine figure, majestic and overwhelming, coloured with exquisite art, had stood out above the blaze of candles against the tall screen that shrouded the shrine. Markenheim had done his work well; and Mr. Brand's passionate discourse had well prepared the popular mind for the revelation. He had quoted in his peroration passage after passage from the Jewish prophets, telling of the City of Peace whose walls rose now before their eyes.

"Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.... For behold I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind.... Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders. O thou so long afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted; behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphires.... I will make thy windows of agates and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. Arise, shine, for thy light is come."

As the chink of the censer-chains had sounded in the stillness, with one consent the enormous crowd had fallen on its knees, and so remained, as the smoke curled up from the hands of the rebel figure who held the thurible. Then the organ had begun to blow, and from the huge massed chorus in the transepts had rolled out the anthem, broken by one passionate cry, from some mad Catholic. But it had been silenced in an instant....

It was incredible--utterly incredible, Percy had told himself. Yet the incredible had happened; and England had found its worship once more--the necessary culmination of unimpeded subjectivity. From the provinces had come the like news. In cathedral after cathedral had been the same scenes. Markenheim's masterpiece, executed in four days after the passing of the bill, had been reproduced by