The Master-Christian Part 6

An empty world! His dream-impression of universal desolation and desertion came suddenly back upon the prelate's mind, and a sudden trembling seized him, though he could discover in himself no cause for fear. Anxiously he surveyed the strange and solitary little wayfarer on the threshold of the Cathedral, and while he thus looked, the boy said wistfully--

"I should have rested here within, but it is closed against me."

"The doors are always locked at night, my child," returned the Cardinal, recovering from his momentary stupor and bewilderment, "But I can give you shelter. Will you come with me?"

With a half-questioning, half-smiling look of grateful wonder, the boy withdrew his hands from their uplifted, supplicating and almost protesting att.i.tude against the locked Cathedral-door, and moving out of the porch shadows into the wide glory of the moonlight, he confronted his interlocutor--

"Will I come with you?" he said--"Nay, but I see you are a Cardinal of the Church, and it is I should ask 'will you receive me?' You do not know who I am--nor where I came from, and I, alas! may not tell you! I am alone; all--all alone,--for no one knows me in the world,--I am quite poor and friendless, and have nothing where--with to pay you for your kindly shelter--I can only bless you!"

Very simply, very gravely the young boy spoke these words, his delicate head uplifted, his face s.h.i.+ning in the moon-rays, and his slight, childish form erect with a grace which was not born of pride so much as of endurance, and again the Cardinal trembled, though he knew not why.

Yet in his very agitation, the desire he had to persuade the tired child to go with him grew stronger and overmastered every other feeling.

"Come then," he said, smiling and extending his hand, "Come, and you shall sleep in my room for the remainder of the night, and to-morrow we will talk of the future. At present you need repose."

The boy smiled gratefully but said nothing, and the Cardinal, satisfied with the mere look of a.s.sent walked with his foundling across the square and into the Hotel Poitiers. Arrived at his own bed-room, he smoothed his couch and settled the pillows carefully with active zeal and tenderness. The boy stood silently, looking on.

"Sleep now, my child," said the Cardinal,--"and forget all your troubles. Lie down here; no one will disturb you till the morning."

"But you, my lord Cardinal," said the boy--"Are you depriving yourself of comfort in order to give it to me? This is not the way of the world!"

"It is MY way," said the Cardinal cheerfully,--"And if the world has been unkind to you, my boy, still take courage,--it will not always be unjust! Do not trouble yourself concerning me; I shall sleep well on the sofa in the next room--indeed, I shall sleep all the better for knowing that your tears have ceased, and that for the present at least you are safely sheltered."

With a sudden quick movement the boy advanced and caught the Cardinal's hands caressingly in his own.

"Oh, are you sure you understand?" he said, his voice growing singularly sweet and almost tender as he spoke--"Are you sure that it is well for you to shelter me?--I--a stranger,--poor, and with no one to speak for me? How do you know what I may be? Shall I not perhaps prove ungrateful and wrong your kindness?"

His worn little face upturned, shone in the dingy little room with a sudden brightness such as one might imagine would illumine the features of an angel, and Felix Bonpre looked down upon him half fascinated, in mingled pity and wonder.

"Such results are with G.o.d, my child," he said gently--"I do not seek your grat.i.tude. It is certainly well for me that I should shelter you,--it would be ill indeed if I permitted any living creature to suffer for lack of what I could give. Rest here in peace, and remember it is for my own pleasure as well as for your good that I desire you to sleep well."

"And you do not even ask my name?" said the boy, half smiling and still raising his sorrowful deep blue eyes to the Cardinal's face.

"You will tell me that when you please," said Felix, laying one hand upon the soft curls that cl.u.s.tered over his foundling's forehead--"I am in no wise curious. It is enough for me to know that you are a child and alone in the world,--such sorrow makes me your servant."

Gently the boy loosened his clasp of the Cardinal's hands.

"Then I have found a friend!" he said,--"That is very strange!" He paused, and the smile that had once before brightened his countenance shone again like a veritable flash of sunlight--"You have the right to know my name, and if you choose, to call me by it,--it is Manuel."

"Manuel!" echoed the Cardinal--"No more than that?"

"No more than that," replied the boy gravely--"I am one of the world's waifs and strays,--one name suffices me."

There followed a brief pause, in which the old man and the child looked at each other full and steadfastly, and once again an inexplicable nervous trembling seized the Cardinal. Overcoming this with an effort, he said softly,--

"Then--Manuel!--good night! Sleep--and Our Lady's blessing be upon you!"

Signing the cross in air he retired, carefully shutting the door and leaving his new-found charge to rest. When he was once by himself in the next room, however, he made no attempt to sleep,--he merely drew a chair to the window and sat down, full of thoughts which utterly absorbed him. There was nothing unusual, surely, in his finding a small lost boy and giving him a night's lodging?--then why was he so affected by it? He could not tell. He fully realized that the plaintive beauty of the child had its share in the powerful attraction he felt,--but there was something else in the nature of his emotion which he found it impossible to define. It was as though some great blankness in his life had been suddenly filled;--as if the boy whom he had found solitary and weeping within the porch of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, belonged to him in some mysterious way and was linked to his life so closely and completely as to make parting impossible. But what a fantastic notion!

Viewed by the light of calm reason, there was nothing in the occurrence to give rise to any such sentiment. Here was a poor little wayfarer, evidently without parents, home, or friends,--and the Cardinal had given him a night's lodging, and to-morrow--yes, to-morrow, he would give him food and warm clothing and money,--and perhaps a recommendation to the Archbishop in order that he might get a chance of free education and employment in Rouen, while proper enquiries were being made about him. That was the soberly prosaic and commonplace view to take of the matter. The personality of the little fellow was intensely winning,--but after all, that had nothing to do with the facts of the case. He was a waif and stray, as he himself had said; his name, so far as he seemed to know it, was Manuel,--an ordinary name enough in France,--and his age might be about twelve,--not more.

Something could be done for him,--something SHOULD be done for him before the Cardinal parted with him. But this idea of "parting" was just what seemed so difficult to contemplate! Puzzled beyond measure at the strange state of mind in which he found himself, Felix Bonpre went over and over again all the events of the day in order,--his arrival in Rouen,--his visit to the Cathedral, and the grand music he had heard or fancied he heard there,--his experience with the sceptical little Patoux children and their mother,--his conversation with the Archbishop, in which he had felt much more excitement than he was willing to admit,--his dream wherein he had been so painfully impressed with a sense of the desertion, emptiness, and end of the world, and finally his discovery of the little lonely and apparently forsaken boy, thrown despairingly as it were against the closed Cathedral, like a frail human wreck cast up from the gulf of the devouring sea. Each incident, trivial in itself, yet seemed of particular importance, though he could not explain or a.n.a.lyse why it should be so.

Meditatively he sat and watched the moon sink like a silver bubble falling downward in the dark,--the stars vanished one by one,--and a faint brown-gold line of suggestive light in the east began the slow creation of a yet invisible dawn. Presently, yielding to a vague impulse of inexplicable tenderness, he rose softly and went to the threshold of the room where his foundling slept. Holding his breath, he listened--but there was no sound. Very cautiously and noiselessly he opened the door, and looked in,--a delicate half-light came through the latticed window and seemed to concentrate itself on the bed where the tired wanderer lay. His fine youthful profile was distinctly outlined,--the soft bright hair cl.u.s.tered like a halo round his broad brows,--and the two small hands were crossed upon his breast, while in his sleep he smiled. Always touched by the beauty, innocence and helplessness of childhood, something in the aspect of this little lad moved the venerable prelate's heart to an unwonted emotion,--and looking upon him, he prayed for guidance as to what he should best do to rescue so gentle and young a creature from the cruelties of the world.

V.

"He has trusted me," said the Cardinal,--"I have found him, and I cannot--dare not--forsake him. For the Master says 'Whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me'."

The next morning broke fair and calm, and as soon as the Patoux household were astir, Cardinal Bonpre sought Madame Patoux in her kitchen, and related to her the story of his night's adventure. She listened deferentially, but could not refrain from occasional exclamations of surprise, mingled with suggestions of warning.

"It is like your good heart, Monseigneur," she said, "to give your own bed to a stray child out of the street,--one, too, of whom you know nothing,--but alas! how often such goodness is repaid by ingrat.i.tude!

The more charity you show the less thanks you receive,--yes, indeed, it is often so!--and it seems as if the Evil One were in it! For look you, I myself have never done a kindness yet without getting a cruelty in exchange for it."

"That is a sad experience, my daughter," returned the Cardinal smiling,--"Nevertheless, it is our duty to go on doing kindnesses, no matter what the results to ourselves may be. It is understood--is it not? that we are to be misjudged in this world. If we had nothing to suffer, what would be the use of exercising such virtues as patience and endurance?"

"Ah, Monseigneur, for you it is different," said Madame Patoux shaking her head and sighing--"You are like the blessed saints--safe in a niche of Holy Church, with Our Lady for ever looking after you. But for poor people such as we are--we see the rough side of life, Monseigneur--and we know that there is very little goodness about in the world,--and as for patience and endurance!--why, no one in these days has the patience to endure even the least contradiction! Two men,--aye even brothers,--will fight for a word like mongrels quarrelling over a bone;--and two women will scream themselves hoa.r.s.e if one should have a lover more than the other--asking your pardon, Monseigneur, for such wicked talk! Still, wicked as it may be, it is true--and not all the powers of Heaven seem to care about making things better. And for this boy,--believe me,--you had better leave him to his own way--for there will be no chance of getting such a poor little waif into the school unless his father and mother are known, or unless someone will adopt him, which is not likely . . . for Rouen is full of misery, and there are enough mouths to feed in most families--and . . . mon Dieu!--is that the child?"

Thus abruptly she broke off her speech, utterly taken aback as she suddenly perceived the little Manuel standing before her. Poorly clad in the roughest garments as he was, his grace and plaintive beauty moved her heart to quick compa.s.sion for his loneliness as he came towards the Cardinal, who, extending one hand, drew him gently to his side and asked if he had slept well?

"Thanks to your goodness, my lord Cardinal," the boy replied, "I slept so well that I thought I was in Heaven! I heard the angels singing in my dreams;--yes!--I heard all the music of a happy world, in which there never had been known a sin or sorrow!"

He rested his fair head lightly against the Cardinal's arm and smiled.

Madame Patoux gazed at him in fascinated silence,--gazed and gazed,--till she found her eyes suddenly full of tears. Then she turned away to hide them,--but not before Cardinal Bonpre had observed her emotion.

"Well, good MOTHER" he said with gentle emphasis on the word--"Would you have me forsake this child that I have found?"

"No, Monseigneur,--no," said Madame Patoux very softly and tremulously--"It is almost as if he were a little lost Angel sent to comfort you."

A curious thrill went through the Cardinal. An angel to comfort him! He looked down at Manuel who still clung caressingly to his arm, and who met his earnest scrutiny with a sweet candid smile.

"Where did you come from, Manuel?" asked Bonpre suddenly.

"I cannot tell you," the boy answered, straightly, yet simply.

The Cardinal paused a moment, his keen penetrating eyes dwelling kindly on the n.o.ble young face beside him.

"You do not wish to tell me,--is that so?" he pursued.

"Yes," said Manuel quietly--"I do not wish to tell you. And if, because of this, you regret your kindness to me, my lord Cardinal, I will go away at once and trouble you no more."

But at these words the Cardinal felt such a sharp consciousness of pain and loss that his nerves ached with positive fear.

"Nay, nay, my child," he said anxiously--"I cannot let you go. It shall be as you please,--I will not think that you could do yourself or me a wrong by concealing what would be right for you to tell. It is true that you are alone in the world?"

"Quite, quite alone!" answered Manuel, a faint shadow darkening the serenity of his eyes--"No one was ever more alone than I!"

Madame Patoux drew nearer and listened.

"And there is no person living who has the right to claim you?"