never manifests itself to me." "Happy man!" the cardinal exclaimed to no one in particular: adding, "Well perhaps we might go upstairs; and Mr. Rose can have his cigarette and listen to me at the same time." [Pg 59] [Pg 59] The room to which they went was a private cabinet, a very vermilion and gold room, large, airy, princely. The cardinal took a long envelope from the bureau. "I think you will find that correct, Mr. Rose," he said. "You had better open it before we go any further." The contents were a blank cheque-book, and a bank-book containing Messrs. Coutts's acknowledgment of the credit of ten thousand pounds to the current account of the Reverend George Arthur Rose. Notwithstanding his natural hypersensibility, that peculiar individual did not become the plaything of his emotions until some time after the event which brought them into action. At the moment when blows or blessings fell upon him, he rarely was conscious of more than a crab is conscious of when its shell is struck or stroked. Later, when he deliberately set himself to analyse consequences, all his senses throbbed and tingled. But, at first, he was wont to act, on the impulse certainly:—but to act. Having acquainted himself with the contents of the envelope, he took out his beloved Waterman, saying "I'm sure Your Eminency will let me have the pleasure of writing my first cheque here." He handed to the cardinal a draft for five thousand pounds, payable to bearer. It afterwards occurred to him that he could have taken no more cynical way of testing the reality of this fortune. He felt ashamed of himself, for he hated cynicism. The act itself merely was the act of a man awakening from a vivid dream and automatically doing what he had resolved, before falling asleep, to do. In effect, it was by way of being a pinch of a kind to himself. There was no doubt whatever but that it was a pinch of another kind to the cardinal. Followed alternately disclaimers, stolidity, embarrassment, humility, unction: the cheque went into the bureau, the cheque-book and the bank-book into the pocket of George's jacket. [Pg 60] [Pg 60] And now, what was the extent of his theological studies? His general knowledge of course was unexceptional: but special—knowledge theology? Well, in Dogma he had done the treatises On Grace—"a very difficult treatise, Mr. Rose"—and
Prev.
Back
Top