Lord of the World 3

Lord of the World 3

"Yes?" said Percy.

 

"Oh, it was pathetic enough. The Science Schools of Cambridge and the

Colonial Department of Oxford were the last hope; and then those went.

The old dons crept about with their books, but nobody wanted them--they

were too purely theoretical; some drifted into the poorhouses, first or

second grade; some were taken care of by charitable clergymen; there was

that attempt to concentrate in Dublin; but it failed, and people soon

forgot them. The buildings, as you know, were used for all kinds of

things. Oxford became an engineering establishment for a while, and

Cambridge a kind of Government laboratory. I was at King's College, you

know. Of course it was all as horrible as it could be--though I am glad

they kept the chapel open even as a museum. It was not nice to see the

chantries filled with anatomical specimens. However, I don't think it

was much worse than keeping stoves and surplices in them."

 

"What happened to you?"

 

"Oh! I was in Parliament very soon; and I had a little money of my own,

too. But it was very hard on some of them; they had little pensions, at

least all who were past work. And yet, I don't know: I suppose it had

to come. They were very little more than picturesque survivals, you

know; and had not even the grace of a religious faith about them."

 

Percy sighed again, looking at the humorously reminiscent face of the

old man. Then he suddenly changed the subject again.

 

"What about this European parliament?" he said.

 

The old man started.

 

"Oh!... I think it will pass," he said, "if a man can be found to push

it. All this last century has been leading up to it, as you see.

Patriotism has been dying fast; but it ought to have died, like slavery

and so forth, under the influence of the Catholic Church. As it is, the

work has been done without the Church; and the result is that the world

is beginning to range itself against us: it is an organised antagonism--

a kind of Catholic anti-Church. Democracy has done what the Divine

Monarchy should have done. If the proposal passes I think we may expect

something like persecution once more.... But, again, the Eastern

invasion may save us, if it comes off.... I do not know...."

 

Percy sat still yet a moment; then he stood up suddenly.

 

"I must go, sir," he said, relapsing into Esperanto. "It is past

nineteen o'clock. Thank you so much. Are you coming, father?"

 

Father Francis stood up also, in the dark grey suit permitted to

priests, and took up his hat.

 

"Well, father," said the old man again, "come again some day, if I

haven't been too discursive. I suppose you have to write your letter

yet?"

 

Percy nodded.

 

"I did half of it this morning," he said, "but I felt I wanted another

bird's-eye view before I could understand properly: I am so grateful to

you for giving it me. It is really a great labour, this daily letter to

the Cardinal-Protector. I am thinking of resigning if I am allowed."

 

"My dear father, don't do that. If I may say so to your face, I think

you have a very shrewd mind; and unless Rome has balanced information

she can do nothing. I don't suppose your colleagues are as careful as

yourself."

 

Percy smiled, lifting his dark eyebrows deprecatingly.

 

"Come, father," he said.

 

* * * * *

 

The two priests parted at the steps of the corridor, and Percy stood for

a minute or two staring out at the familiar autumn scene, trying to

understand what it all meant. What he had heard downstairs seemed

strangely to illuminate that vision of splendid prosperity that lay

before him.

 

The air was as bright as day; artificial sunlight had carried all before

it, and London now knew no difference between dark and light. He stood

in a kind of glazed cloister, heavily floored with a preparation of

rubber on which footsteps made no sound. Beneath him, at the foot of the

stairs, poured an endless double line of persons severed by a partition,

going to right and left, noiselessly, except for the murmur of Esperanto

talking that sounded ceaselessly as they went. Through the clear,

hardened glass of the public passage showed a broad sleek black roadway,

ribbed from side to side, and puckered in the centre, significantly

empty, but even as he stood there a note sounded far away from Old

Westminster, like the hum of a giant hive, rising as it came, and an

instant later a transparent thing shot past, flashing from every angle,

and the note died to a hum again and a silence as the great Government

motor from the south whirled eastwards with the mails. This was a

privileged roadway; nothing but state-vehicles were allowed to use it,

and those at a speed not exceeding one hundred miles an hour.

 

Other noises were subdued in this city of rubber; the passenger-circles

were a hundred yards away, and the subterranean traffic lay too deep for

anything but a vibration to make itself felt. It was to remove this

vibration, and silence the hum of the ordinary vehicles, that the

Government experts had been working for the last twenty years.

 

Once again before he moved there came a long cry from overhead,

startlingly beautiful and piercing, and, as he lifted his eyes from the

glimpse of the steady river which alone had refused to be transformed,

he saw high above him against the heavy illuminated clouds, a long

slender object, glowing with soft light, slide northwards and vanish on

outstretched wings. That musical cry, he told himself, was the voice of

one of the European line of volors announcing its arrival in the capital

of Great Britain.

 

"Until our Lord comes back," he thought to himself; and for an instant

the old misery stabbed at his heart. How difficult it was to hold the

eyes focussed on that far horizon when this world lay in the foreground

so compelling in its splendour and its strength! Oh, he had argued with

Father Francis an hour ago that size was not the same as greatness, and

that an insistent external could not exclude a subtle internal; and he

had believed what he had then said; but the doubt yet remained till he

silenced it by a fierce effort, crying in his heart to the Poor Man of

Nazareth to keep his heart as the heart of a little child.

 

Then he set his lips, wondering how long Father Francis would bear the

pressure, and went down the steps.

 

 

 

 

BOOK I-THE ADVENT

 

CHAPTER I

 

I

 

Oliver Brand, the new member for Croydon (4), sat in his study, looking

out of the window over the top of his typewriter.

 

His house stood facing northwards at the extreme end of a spur of the

Surrey Hills, now cut and tunnelled out of all recognition; only to a

Communist the view was an inspiriting one. Immediately below the wide

windows the embanked ground fell away rapidly for perhaps a hundred

feet, ending in a high wall, and beyond that the world and works of men

were triumphant as far as eye could see. Two vast tracks like streaked

race-courses, each not less than a quarter of a mile in width, and sunk

twenty feet below the surface of the ground, swept up to a meeting a

mile ahead at the huge junction. Of those, that on his left was the

First Trunk road to Brighton, inscribed in capital letters in the

Railroad Guide, that to the right the Second Trunk to the Tunbridge and

Hastings district. Each was divided length-ways by a cement wall, on one

side of which, on steel rails, ran the electric trams, and on the other

lay the motor-track itself again divided into three, on which ran, first

the Government coaches at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an

hour, second the private motors at not more than sixty, third the cheap

Government line at thirty, with stations every five miles. This was

further bordered by a road confined to pedestrians, cyclists and

ordinary cars on which no vehicle was allowed to move at more than

twelve miles an hour.

 

Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house-roofs, with

short towers here and there marking public buildings, from the Caterham

district on the left to Croydon in front, all clear and bright in

smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the low

suburban hills against the April sky.

 

There was surprisingly little sound, considering the pressure of the

population; and, with the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a

train fled north or south, and the occasional sweet chord of the great

motors as they neared or left the junction, there was little to be heard

in this study except a smooth, soothing murmur that filled the air like

the murmur of bees in a garden.

 

Oliver loved every hint of human life--all busy sights and sounds--and

was listening now, smiling faintly to himself as he stared out into the

clear air. Then he set his lips, laid his fingers on the keys once more,

and went on speech-constructing.

 

* * * * *

 

He was very fortunate in the situation of his house. It stood in an

angle of one of those huge spider-webs with which the country was

covered, and for his purposes was all that he could expect. It was close

enough to London to be extremely cheap, for all wealthy persons had

retired at least a hundred miles from the throbbing heart of England;

and yet it was as quiet as he could wish. He was within ten minutes of

Westminster on the one side, and twenty minutes of the sea on the other,

and his constituency lay before him like a raised map. Further, since

the great London termini were but ten minutes away, there were at his

disposal the First Trunk lines to every big town in England. For a

politician of no great means, who was asked to speak at Edinburgh on one

evening and in Marseilles on the next, he was as well placed as any man in Europe.