The Master-Christian Part 33

"Ay, ay, we'll hear of ye--for we'll take the papers in just for news of yer!" said Ben, with a rough laugh which covered his deeper feelings, "And mebbe ye'll come back afore we's all drownded!"

And so with a few more kindly words they left him, and he stood at the gate watching their stalwart figures disappear down the different windings of the crooked and picturesque little street.

"G.o.d bless them all!" he murmured, "They have taught me many a grand lesson!"

The next day he took his quiet departure in the early morning before the village folks were up and stirring,--and a month later he addressed a large meeting in one of the poorest and most densely populated districts of London on "The Ethics of Christ versus the Clergy", which attracted universal attention and created an enormous sensation. His book began to sell in thousands where it had previously sold in hundreds, and he earned sufficient from the profits of the sale to keep him going in the simple fas.h.i.+on of clothes and food to which he had strictly disciplined himself, so that he felt free to plunge into the thick of the fight. And he straightway did so. His name became a terror to liars, and a clarion sound of alarm in the ears of social hypocrites. He wrote another book which obtained even a larger hearing than the first--and he spoke to the people on an average once a week, wherever he could a.s.semble them together. All his addresses were made gratuitously, and he soon resembled a sort of blazing torch in the darkness, to which the crowds rushed for light and leading. In the midst of the sensation his writings and orations were creating, a n.o.ble lord, with several Church livings in his gift, asked him to stand for Parliament, and offered to pay the expenses of his election. At first Aubrey was sufficiently tempted by the offer to pause hesitatingly on the verge of acceptance, but twenty-four hours' hard thinking promptly pulled him together. "No," he said--"I see what you mean! You and your party wish to tie my hands--to gag my mouth, and make me as one of yourselves--no, I will not consent to it. I will serve the people with all my life and soul!--but not in YOUR way!"

And to avoid further discussion he went straight out of England for a time, and travelled through Europe, making friends everywhere, and learning new phases of the "Christian Dispensation" at every turn in his road. Paris had held him fascinated for a long while, not only because he saw her doom written like that of Babylon in letters of fire, and Ruin, like a giant bird of prey hovering over her with beak and claw prepared to pick the very flesh from her bones,--but also because he had met Angela Sovrani, one of the most rarely-gifted types of womanhood he had ever seen. He recognised her genius at once, and marvelled at it. And still more did he marvel at her engagement of marriage with Florian Varillo. That such a fair, proud creature so splendidly endowed, could consent to unite herself to a man so vastly inferior, was an interesting puzzle to him. He had met Varillo by chance in Naples one winter before he ever saw Angela, and knew that half his claim to the notice of the social world there was the fact of his betrothal to the famous "Sovrani." And moved by a strange desire to follow out this romance, and also because he was completing his studies of the Roman Church viewed as a "moral support to the education and elevation of man," he, after leaving Paris, and paying a brief visit to Florence on a matter of business which could not be attended to otherwise than personally, went on as though drawn by some invisible magnet to Rome. He had only been twenty-four hours in the city, when chance had led him under the balcony where the sculptured angels fronted the moon, and from whence the sweet voice of Sylvie Hermenstein had floated towards him with the words,--

"Ti voglio ben a.s.sai, E tu non pensi a me."

And he who had faced crowds without a tremor, and had flung thunderbolts of splendid defiance at shams, with the manner of a young Ajax defying the lightning, now found himself strangely put out and disturbed in his usual composure by the innocent aspect, and harmless perfume of a rose,--a mere little pink petalled thing, with not even a thorn on its polished green stalk! He had placed it in a gla.s.s of water on his writing table, and his eyes rested upon it the morning after he had received it with almost a reproachful air. What was its golden-hearted secret? Why, when he studied it, did he see the soft hue of a fair cheek, the flash of a bright eye, the drooping wave of a golden web of hair, the dainty curve of a white arm on which the sparkle of diamonds gleamed? How was it that he managed to perceive all this in the leaves of a rose? He could not tell; and he was angry with himself for his inability to explain the puzzle. He reminded himself that he had business in Rome--"business," he repeated sternly to his own conscience,--the chief part of which was to ascertain from some one of the leading spirits at the Vatican the view taken by the Papacy of the Ritualistic movement in England.

"If you can gauge correctly the real feeling, and render it in plain terms, apart from all conventional or social considerations," wrote his publisher in a letter which had just reached him--"that is, if you dare to do so much--and I think you will scarcely hesitate--you will undoubtedly give great and lasting help to Christian England." As he read this over for the second or third time he remembered that he had an appointment with a certain powerful personage, known as Monsignor Gherardi, that morning at eleven.

"And you," he said, apostrophising the rose with a protesting shake of his head, "were nearly making me forget it!" He lifted the flower out of the water and touched it with his lips. "She was a fair creature,--the woman who wore you last night!"--he said with a smile as he put it carefully back again in its gla.s.s, "In fact, she was very much like you! But though I notice you have no thorns, I dare say she has!" He paused a moment, lost in thought, the smile still giving warmth and light to his features; then with a quick movement of impatience at his own delaying, threw on his coat and hat and left the room, saying, "Now for Gherardi!"

XIX.

Set square and dark against the pale blue of the Italian sky the Palazzo Sovrani, seen for the first time, suggests a prison rather than a dwelling house,--a forbidding structure, which though of unsentient marble, seems visibly to frown into the light, and exhale from itself a cloud on the clearest day. Its lowest windows, raised several feet from the ground, and barred across with huge iron clamps, altogether deprive the would-be inquisitive stranger from the possibility of peering within,--the monstrous iron gate, richly wrought with fantastic scroll-work and heraldic emblems raised in bra.s.s, presents so cold and forbidding a front that some of the youthful ladies who were Angela's friends, were wont to declare that it gave them a palpitation of the heart to summon up the necessary courage required to ring the great bell. Within the house there was much of a similar gloom, save in Angela's own studio, which she had herself made beautiful with a brightness and lightness found in no other corner of the vast and stately abode. Her father, Prince Pietro Sovrani, was of a reserved and taciturn nature,--poor but intensely proud--and he would suffer no interference by so much as a word or a suggestion respecting the manner in which he chose to arrange or to order his household. His wife Gita Bonpre, the only sister of the good Cardinal, had been the one love of his life,--and when she died all his happiness had died with her,--his heart was broken, but he showed nothing of his grief to the outside world, save that in manner he was more silent and reserved than ever,--more difficult to deal with,--more dangerous to approach. People knew well enough that he was poor, but they never dared to mention it,--though once an English acquaintance, moved by the best intentions in the world, had suggested that he could make a good deal of money by having a portion of the Palazzo Sovrani redecorated, and modernized, to suit the comfort and convenience of travelling millionaires who might probably be disposed to pay a high rent for it during the Roman "season." But the proposal was disastrous in its results. Sovrani had turned upon his adviser like an embodied thunder-cloud.

"When a prince of the House of Sovrani lets out apartments," he said, "you may ask your English Queen to take in was.h.i.+ng!"

And a saturnine smile, accompanied by the frowning bend of his white fuzzy eyebrows over his flas.h.i.+ng black eyes, had produced such a withering, blistering effect on the soul of the unfortunate Englishman, whose practical ideas of utility had exceeded his prudence, that he had scarcely ever dared to look the irate Italian n.o.ble in the face again.

Just now, the Prince was in his library, seated in dignified uprightness like a king enthroned to give audience, in a huge high-backed chair, shadowed over by an ancient gilded baldacchino, listening with a certain amount of grim patience to his daughter's softly murmured narrative of her stay in Paris. He had received the Cardinal an hour ago on his arrival, with first, a humble genuflexion as became a son of the Church, and secondly with a kiss on both cheeks as became a brother-in-law. The Cardinal's youthful companion Manual, he had scarcely remarked, even while giving him welcome. These two had gone to the suite of rooms prepared for the reception of His Eminence,--but Angela, after hastily changing her travelling dress, had come down to her father, anxious not only to give, but to hear news--especially news of Florian Varillo. Prince Sovrani, however, was not a man given to much social observation,--nor did he ever break through his half cynical, half gloomy humour, to detail the gossip of Rome, and he therefore sat more or less unmoved, while Angela told him all she could think of that would interest him. At last with a little delicate hesitation, she related the strange story of Abbe Vergniaud, and added,

"And by this time, I suppose, the Holy Father has been told all!"

"Naturally," said the Prince, with a stern smile moving the hard muscles of his mouth, "Moretti's love of scandal is as deep as that of any old woman!--and the joy of excommunicating a soul from the salvation of the Church must be too exquisite to admit of any delay! I am sorry for Vergniaud, but I do not think he will suffer much. These things are scarcely ever noticed in the press nowadays, and it will only be a very limited circle that even learns of his excommunication.

Nevertheless, I am sorry--one is always sorry for brave men, even if they are reckless. And the son is Gys Grandit! Corpo di Bacco! What a denouement!"

He considered it a moment, looking straight before him at the rows of ancient and musty books that adorned his walls,--then he gave a sudden exclamation.

"Pesta! I had nearly forgotten! I knew there was a curious thing I had to tell you, Angela,--but in the hurry of your arrival it had for the moment escaped my mind . . ."

"About Florian?" asked Angela anxiously.

The Prince bent his brows upon her quizzically.

"Florian! What should I know about Florian? He has not been near me since you left Rome. I fancy he will not be too attentive a son-in-law!

No, it is not about Florian. It is about your uncle Felix. Have you heard of this miracle he has performed?"

Angela's eyes opened wide.

"A miracle! What do you mean by a miracle?"

"Santissima Madonna! A miracle is always a miracle," retorted her father testily, "A something out of the common, and an upsetting of the ordinary laws of nature. Did your uncle tell you nothing of his visit to Rouen?"

"Nothing," replied Angela, "Nothing but the story of Manuel."

"Manuel? Who is he?"

"The boy he has with him now. Uncle Felix found him lost at night near the Cathedral of Rouen, and has taken him under his protection ever since."

"Altro! That is nothing!" said her father, "That is only one of Felix's quixotic ideas. There is no miracle in that. But when a child is a cripple from babyhood, and our Felix cures him by one simple prayer, and makes him strong and well again--Gran Dio!--it is not remarkable that such news creates a stir at the Vatican."

"But it cannot be true!" said Angela surprised, "Uncle Felix never said a word about it. I am sure he knows nothing whatever of such a report!"

"Ebben! We will ask him presently,"--and the Prince raised himself stiffly and slowly out of his throne-like chair, "Personally I have considered Felix above any sort of priestly trickery; but after all, if he has an ambition for the Papacy, I do not see why he should not play for it. Others do!"

"Oh, father!" cried Angela, "How can you think such a thing of Uncle Felix! He is as nearly a saint as any mortal man can be!"

"So I always thought, child--so I always thought!" replied the Prince, with a vexed air, "But to perform such a miracle of healing as to cure a child with a twisted spine and bent legs, by the mere utterance of a prayer!--that is impossible!--impossible! It sounds like charlatanism--not like Felix!"

As he spoke he straightened himself and stood upright, a tall, spare, elegant figure of a man,--his dark complexioned face very much resembling a fine bronze cast of the Emperor Aurelius. Angela rose too and stood beside him, and his always more or less defiant eyes slowly softened as he looked at her.

"You grow very like your mother," he said, with just the faintest tremor in his voice--"Ah, la mia Gita!"

A sigh that was like a groan broke from his lips, and Angela laid her head caressingly against his breast in silence. He touched her soft hair tenderly.

"Very like your mother," he repeated, "Very like! But you will leave me soon, as she has left me,--not for Heaven, no!--but for that doubtful new life called marriage. It is not doubtful when there is love--love in both hearts;--and if there is any difference at all, the love should be greater on the man's side than on the woman's! Remember that, Angela mia, remember that! The true lover is always spiritually on his knees before the woman he loves; not only in pa.s.sion, but in wors.h.i.+p--in reverence!"

"And is not Florian so?" murmured Angela timidly.

"I do not know, child; he may be! Sometimes I think that he loves himself too much to love YOU as well as you deserve. But we shall see."

As he spoke a servant entered, carrying an exquisite basket of flowers, and brought it to Angela who blushed and smiled divinely as she took it and opened the envelope fastened to its handle and addressed to her, which contained merely these words,--

"A la mia dolcezza! Con voto d'eterno amore!

"FLORIAN."

"Are they not lovely?" she said, bending over the blossoms tenderly as though she would have taken them all into her embrace, "Such a sweet welcome home!"

Her father nodded, but gave no verbal response to her enthusiasm.

Presently he said,

"How about your picture? When will it be finished?"

"A month's work will be enough now," she replied, looking up quickly--"And then--"

"Then it will remain in one of the galleries unsold!" said Sovrani, with a touch of bitterness in his tone which he could not quell, "You have chosen too large a canvas. From mere size it is unsaleable,--for unless it were a marvel of the world no nation would ever purchase a woman's picture."

Angela's delicate head drooped,--she turned away to hide the tears that rushed to her eyes. Her father's words were harsh, yet eminently practical; she knew he did not mean them unkindly, but that the continual pinch of poverty was sometimes greater than he could endure with patience. Angela had earned considerable sums of money by the smaller pictures which had established her name; and the Prince had bitterly grudged the time she had given to the enormous canvas which had now remained so long in her studio covered up, even from his eyes--for he had made up his mind that it was one of those fantastic dreams of genius, which when they become realised into the substance of a book or a picture, terrify the timid conventions of the world so completely as to cause general avoidance.

"If Raffaelle were alive he would not paint a 'Transfiguration' now,"