Hadrian the Seventh

In mind he was tired, worn out, by years of hope deferred, of loneliness, of unrewarded toil. In body he was almost prostrate by the pain of an arm on the tenth day of vaccination. Bodily pain stung him like a personal affront. “Someone will have to be made miserable for this,” he once said during the throes of a toothache. He was no stranger to mental fatigue: but, when to that was added corporeal anguish, he came near collapse. His capacity for work was constricted: the mere sight of his writing materials filled him with disgust. But, because he had a horror of being discovered in a state of inaction, after breakfast he sat down as usual and tried to write. Dazed in a torrent of ideas, he painfully halted for words: stumbling in a maze of words, he frequently lost the thread of his argument: now and then, in sheer exhaustion, his pen remained immobile. He sat in a small low armchair which was covered with shabby brocade, dull-red and green. An old drawing-board, of the large size denominated Antiquarian, rested on his knees. The lower edge frayed the brocade on the arms of the chair. His little yellow cat Flavio lay asleep on the tilted board, nestling in the bend of his left elbow. That was the only living creature to whom he ever spoke with affection as well as with politeness. His left hand steadied his MS., the sheets of which were clipped together at the top by a metal clip. At the upper edge of the board a couple of Publishers’ Dummies reposed, having the outward similitude of six-shilling novels: but he had filled their pages with his archaic handwriting.

“Dr. Courtleigh and Dr. Talacryn?” he repeated as a query, in the tone of one to whom Beelzebub and the Archangel Periel have been announced at eleven o’clock on the morning of a working day.

“Yes,” the maid replied. “Clergymen. One is that bishop who came before.”

“The bishop who came before! And⁠—What’s the other like?”

“Oh, quite old and feeble⁠—rather stoutish⁠—but he’s been a fine handsome man in his day. He wears a red necktie under his collar.”

“Well⁠—I⁠—am!⁠ ⁠… Thanks. I’ll be down in a minute.”

George put his writing-board away and brushed the front of his blue linen jacket, mentally and corporeally pulling himself together.

“Flavio, I should just like to know the meaning of this. I rather wish that I had Iulo here to back me up. If they are meditating mischief, an athletic and quarrelsome youngster, with an eye like a basilisk and a mouth full of torrential English, would be an excellent trump to play. Mischief? What nonsense! Don’t you give way to your nerves, man. Respectable epistatai do not habitually engage in mischief, as you are well aware. You have nothing to fear: so put on a mask⁠—the superior one with a tinge of disdain in it⁠—and brace yourself up to resist the devil; and go downstairs at once to see him flee.”

The two visitors were in the dining-room, a confined drab and aniline room rather overfilled with indistinct but useful furniture. When George entered, they stood up⁠—grave important men, of over forty and seventy years respectively, dark-haired and robust, white-haired and of picturesque and supercilious mien.

The portentous figures in the Doom appeared to writhe. Inside the screen Macca and Berstein went; and paused; and faced the crowd which followed them.

George was looking about him, vehemently alert. He had felt like this three times in his life before, at the exsequies of the Queen of England, at the incoronation of the King of England, at the foot of the first grave which had opened in his path through life. It was the feeling of the cognoscente who is permitted, during sixty seconds, to do his own pleasure in a treasure-chest filled to the brim with inestimable intagliate gems. It was the feeling of absolute acquisitiveness. Here was history in the making; and he was in the front rank of the spectators. There was no time to think of effects. This was a case of causes; and every detail must be seized and stored. Selection could come later: appreciation afterwards: but now he must collect. First, his glance flashed upward to the little square canopies: they all were in position. Then, to the occupants of the five and fifty thrones: they were sitting as still as the conscript-fathers sat in their curule chairs, turned-to and watching the crowd which oozed through the screen-gates. Unconsciously, George was urged further and further in. His demeanour was abstrusely unemotional: he continued violently absorbent of the spectacle. Presently, he whispered to the bishop, “What is it? What is happening?”

“I think God has given us a Pope.”

“Oh! Whom?”

“Wait. We shall know in a minute.”

The silence, the stillness, the dim light, where motionless forms of cardinals curved like the frozen crests of waves carven in white jade and old ivory on a sea of amethyst, were more than marvellous.

At the conferring of the episcopal ring, He drew-back His hand; and demanded an amethyst instead of the proffered emerald. The ceremony halted till the canonical stone came. Cardinals noted the first manifestation of pontifical will, with much concern, and with some annoyance. Ragna muttered of ignoble upstarts: Vivole, of boyish arrogance: Berstein, of beggars on horseback. “He, who is born of a hen, always scratches the ground,” asserted the Benedictine Cacciatore: and “He, who was a frog, is now a king,” Labeur quoted from the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter.

They brought Him before the altar; and set Him in a crimson-velvet chair, asking what pontifical name He would choose.

“Hadrian the Seventh:” the response came unhesitatingly, undemonstratively.

“Your Holiness would perhaps prefer to be called Leo, or Pius, or Gregory, as is the modern manner?” the Cardinal-Dean inquired with imperious suavity.

“The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth: the present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our Own impulse, We command.”

Then there was no more to be said. The election of Hadrian the Seventh was proclaimed in the Conclave. They came to the ceremony of adoration. One by one, Their Eminencies kissed the Supreme Pontiff’s foot and hand and cheek. Contact with senile humanity made His juvenile soul shudder. All the time he was saying in His mind “Not unto Us, O Lord, not unto Us.⁠ ⁠…” Yet that seemed such a silly inadequate thing to say.

Three children burst through the shrubs⁠—and stood transfixed. They were a couple of black-eyed black-haired girls, and a very pale-coloured very delicately-articulated slim and stalwart baby-boy with dark-star-like eyes and brows superbly drawn. All Hadrian’s fearful terror of children paralyzed Him. These limpid glances made Him feel such a hackneyed old sinner. But He showed no outward tremor, looking gently and genially at His visitors, and wondering what (in the name of all the gods) He ought to say or do. Three nurses and an athletic tailor-made lady added their presence.

“A thousand pardons, sir,” a nurse exclaimed;⁠—“O Santissimo Padre!”⁠—Six knees flopped on the ground.

“Missy,” the boy announced, “I have found a white father. Why have I seen a white father before never?” His utterance was very deliberate, and his English quite devoid of accented syllables.

The tailor-made lady rose to the occasion with an intuition which only could be feminine and a self-possession which only could be English. She bowed to the Pope, saying “Your Holiness will pardon the intrusion. The children escaped us at the fork in the path⁠—”

“But it is a pleasure,” Hadrian hypocritically put in: “it is a pleasure,” He repeated, seeing that she was about to withdraw her charges; “and it would be a greater pleasure to know the names of these little ones.”

“The Prince Filiberto, the Princess Yolanda, and the Princess Mafalda,” the lady replied: “the Queen is giving a children’s picnic in Lady Demochede’s woods; and we took the liberty of trespassing here in search of wildflowers. Of course we had no idea⁠—”