Books: The Master Christian

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Master Christian

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Angela immediately rose from the piano, and wheeled a large oaken
chair with a carved and gilded canopy, into the centre of the
studio.

"Well, if you want to see my sketches--and they are only sketches,"
she said,--"you must come and sit here. Now," as her uncle obeyed
her, "you look enthroned in state,--that canopy is just fitted for
you, and you are a picture in yourself!--Yes, you are, dearest
uncle! And not all the artists in the world could ever do you
justice I Monsieur l'Abbe, will you sit just where you please?--And
Mr. Leigh, you have seen everything, so it does not matter."

"It matters very much," said Leigh with a smile, "For I want to see
everything again. If I may, I will stand here."

And he took up his position close to the Cardinal's chair.

"But where is the boy?" asked Vergniaud, "Where is the foundling of
the Cathedral?"

"He left us some minutes ago," said Angela, "He went to your room,
uncle."

"Was he pleased with the music?" asked the Cardinal.

"I think he enjoyed every note of it," said Leigh, "A thoughtful
lad! He was very silent while I played,--but silence is often the
most eloquent appreciation."

"Are we to be silent then over the work of Donna Sovrani?" enquired
the Abbe gaily. "Must we not express our admiration?"

"If you have any admiration to express," said Angela carelessly,
setting, as she spoke, an easel facing the Cardinal; "but I am
afraid you will greatly disapprove of me and condemn all my work
this year. I should explain to you first that I am composing a very
large picture,--I began it in Rome some three years ago, and it is
in my studio there,--but I require a few French types of countenance
in order to quite complete it. The sketches I have made here are
French types only. They will all be reproduced in the larger canvas-
-but they are roughly done just now. This is the first of them. I
call it 'A Servant of Christ, at the Madeleine, Paris.'"

And she placed the canvas she held on the easel and stood aside,
while all three men looked at it with very different eyes,--one with
poignant regret and pain,--the other with a sense of shame,--and the
third with a thrill of strong delight in the power of the work, and
of triumph in the lesson it gave.

IX.

Low beetling brows,--a sensual, cruel mouth with a loosely
projecting under-lip,--eyes that appeared to be furtively watching
each other across the thin bridge of nose,--a receding chin and a
narrow cranium, combined with an expression which was hypocritically
humble, yet sly,--this was the type Angela Sovrani had chosen to
delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no
redeeming point,--a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a
priest,--"A servant of Christ," as she called him. The title, united
with that wicked and repulsive countenance, was a terribly
significant suggestion. For some minutes no one spoke,--and the
Cardinal was the first to break the silence.

"Angela,--my dear child"--he said, in low, strained tones, "I am
sorry you have done this! It is powerful--so powerful that it is
painful as well. It cuts me to the heart that you should find it
necessary to select such an example of the priesthood, though of
course I am not in the secret of your aims--I do not understand your
purpose . . ."

He broke off,--and Angela, who had stood silent, looking as though
she were lost in a dream, took up his unfinished sentence.

"You do not understand my purpose?--Dearest uncle, I hardly
understand it myself! Some force stronger than I am, is urging me to
paint the picture I have begun,--some influence more ardent and
eager than my own, burns like a fever in me, persuading me to
complete the design. You blame me for choosing such an evil type of
priest? But there is no question of choice! These faces are ordinary
among our priests. At all the churches, Sunday after Sunday I have
looked for a good, a noble face;--in vain! For an even commonly-
honest face,--in vain! And my useless search has ended by impressing
me with profound sorrow and disgust that so many low specimens of
human intellect are selected as servants of our Lord. Do not judge
me too severely! I feel that I have a work to do,--and a lesson to
give in the work, when done. I may fail;--I may be told that as a
woman I have no force, and no ability to make any powerful or
lasting impression on this generation;--but at any rate I feel that
I must try! If priests of the Church were like you, how different it
would all be! But you always forget that you are an exception to the
rule,--you do not realise how very exceptional you are! I told you
before I showed you this sketch that you would probably disapprove
of it and condemn me,--but I really cannot help it. In this matter
nothing--not even the ban of the Church itself, can deter me from
fulfilling what I have designed to do in my own soul!"

She spoke passionately and with ardour,--and the Cardinal looked at
her with something of surprise and trouble. The fire of genius is as
he knew, a consuming one,--and he had never entirely realized how
completely it filled and dominated this slight feminine creature for
whom he felt an almost paternal tenderness. Before he could answer
her the Abbe Vergniaud spoke.

"Donna Sovrani is faithful to the truth in her sketch," he said,
"therefore, as a lover of truth I do not see, my dear Bonpre, why
you should object! If she has,--as she says,--some great aim in
view, she must fulfil it in her own way. I quite agree with her in
her estimate of the French priests,--they are for the most part
despicable-looking persons,--only just a grade higher than their
brothers of Italy and Spain. But what would you have? The iron hand
of Rome holds them back from progress,--they are speaking and acting
lies; and like the stagemimes, have to put on paint and powder to
make the lies go down. But when the paint and powder come off, the
religious mime is often as ill-looking as the stage one! Donna
Sovrani has caught this particular example, before he has had time
to put on holy airs and turn up the footlights. What do you think
about it, Mr. Leigh?"

"I think, as I have always thought," said Leigh quietly, "that Donna
Sovrani is an inspired artist,--and that being inspired it follows
that she must carry out her own convictions whether they suit the
taste of others or not. 'A Servant of Christ' is a painful truth,
boldly declared."

Angela was unmoved by the compliment implied. She only glanced
wistfully at the Cardinal, who still sat silent. Then without a word
she withdrew the offending sketch from the easel and set another in
its place.

"This," she said gently, "is the portrait of an Archbishop. I need
not name his diocese. He is very wealthy, and excessively selfish. I
call this, 'LORD, _I_ THANK THEE THAT I AM NOT AS OTHER MEN'."

Vergniaud laughed as he looked,--he knew the pictured dignitary
well. The smooth countenance, the little eyes comfortably sunken in
small rolls of fat, the smug smiling lips, the gross neck and heavy
jaw,--marks of high feeding and prosperous living,--and above all
the perfectly self-satisfied and mock-pious air of the man,--these
points were given with the firm touch of a master's brush, and the
Abbe, after studying the picture closely, turned to Angela with a
light yet deferential bow.

"Chere Sovrani, you are stronger than ever! Surely you have improved
much since you were last in Paris? Your strokes are firmer, your
grasp is bolder. Have your French confreres seen your work this
year?"

"No," replied Angela, "I am resolved they shall see nothing till my
picture is finished."

"May one ask why?"

A flash of disdain passed over the girl's face.

"For a very simple reason! They take my ideas and use them,--and
then, when my work is produced they say it is _I_ who have copied
from THEM, and that women have no imagination! I have been cheated
once or twice in that way,--this time no one has any idea what I am
doing."

"No one? Not even Signer Varillo?"

"No," said Angela, smiling a little, "Not even Signor Varillo. I
want to surprise him."

"In what way?" asked the Cardinal, rousing himself from his pensive
reverie.

Angela blushed.

"By proving that perhaps, after all, a woman can do a great thing in
art,--a really great thing!" she said, "Designed greatly, and
greatly executed."

"Does he not admit that, knowing you?" asked Aubrey Leigh
suggestively.

"Oh, he is most kind and sympathetic to me in my work," explained
Angela quickly, vexed to think that she had perhaps implied some
little point that was not quite in her beloved one's favour. "But he
is like most men,--they have a preconceived idea of women, and of
what their place should be in the world--"

"Unchanged since the early phases of civilization, when women were
something less valuable than cattle?" said Leigh smiling.

"Oh, the cattle idea is not exploded, by any means!" put in
Vergniaud. "In Germany and Switzerland, for example, look at the
women who are ground down to toil and hardship there! The cows are
infinitely prettier and more preferable, and lead much pleasanter
lives. And the men for whom these poor wretched women work, lounge
about in cafes all day, smoking and playing dominoes. The barbaric
arrangement that a woman should be a man's drudge and chattel is
quite satisfactory, I think, to the majority of our sex. It is
certainly an odd condition of things that the mothers of men should
suffer most from man's cruelty. But it is the work of an all-wise
Providence, no doubt; and you, Mr. Leigh, will swear that it is all
right!"

"It is all right," said Leigh quietly, "or rather I should say, it
WILL be all right,--and it would have been all right long ago, if we
had, as Emerson puts it, 'accepted the hint of each new experience.'
But that is precisely what we will not do. Woman is the true
helpmate of man, and takes a natural joy in being so whenever we
will allow it,--whenever we will give her scope for her actions,
freedom for her intelligence, and trust for her instincts. But for
the present many of us still prefer to play savage,--the complete
savage in low life,--the civilized savage in high. The complete
savage is found in the dockyard labourer, who makes a woman bear his
children and then kicks her to death,--the savage in high life is
the man who equally kills the mother of his children, but in another
way, namely, by neglect and infidelity, while he treats his numerous
mistresses just as the Turk treats the creatures of his harem--
merely as so many pretty soft animals, requiring to be fed with
sweets and ornamented with jewels, and then to be cast aside when
done with. All pure savagery! But we are slowly evolving from it
into something better. A few of us there are, who honour womanhood,-
-a few of us believe in women as guiding stars in our troubled sky,-
-a few of us would work and climb to greatness for love of the one
woman we adore,--would conquer all obstacles,--ay, would die for her
if need be, of what is far more difficult, would live for her the
life of a hero and martyr! Yes--such things are done,--and men can
be found who will do such things--all for a woman's sake."

There was a wonderful passion in his voice,--a deep thrill of
earnestness which carried conviction with sweetness. Cardinal Bonpre
looked at him with a smile.

"You are perhaps one of those men, Mr. Leigh?" he said.

"I do not know,--I may be," responded Leigh, a flush rising to his
cheeks;--"but,--so far, no woman has ever truly loved me, save my
mother. But apart from all personalities, I am a great believer in
women. The love of a good woman is a most powerful lever to raise
man to greatness,--I do not mean by 'good' the goody-goody
creature,--no, for that is a sort of woman who does more mischief in
her so-called 'blameless' life than a very Delilah. I mean by
'good', a strong, pure, great soul in woman,--sincere, faithful,
patient, full of courage and calm,--and with this I maintain she
must prove a truly God-given helpmate to man. For we are rough
creatures at best,--irritable creatures too!--you see," and here a
slight smile lighted up his delicate features, "we really do try
more or less to reach heights that are beyond us--we are always
fighting for a heaven of some sort, whether we make it of gold, or
politics, or art;--it is a 'heaven' or a 'happiness' that we want;--
we would be as gods,--we would scale Olympus,--and sometimes Olympus
refuses to be scaled! And then we tumble down, very cross, very
sore, very much ruffled;--and it is only a woman who can comfort us
then, and by her love and tenderness mend our broken limbs and put
salve on our wounded pride."

"Well, then, surely the Church is in a very bad way," said Vergniaud
smiling, "Think of the vow of perpetual celibacy!"

"Celibacy cannot do away with woman's help or influence," said
Leigh, "There are always mothers and sisters, instead of sweethearts
and wives. I am in favour of celibacy for the clergy. I think a
minister of Christ should be free to work for and serve Christ
only."

"You are quite right, Mr. Leigh;" said the Cardinal, "There is more
than enough to do in every day of our lives if we desire to truly
follow His commands. But in this present time, alas!--religion is
becoming a question of form--not of heart."

"Dearest uncle, if you think that, you will not judge me too
severely for my pictures," said Angela quickly, throwing herself on
her knees beside him. "Do you not see? It is just because the
ministers of Christ are so lax that I have taken to studying them in
my way,--which is, I know, not your way;--still, I think we both
mean one and the same thing!"

"You are a woman, Angela," said the Cardinal gently, "and as a woman
you must be careful of offences--"

"Oh, a woman!" exclaimed Angela, her beautiful eyes flashing with
mingled tenderness and scorn, and her whole face lighting up with
animation, "Only a woman! SHE must not give a grand lesson to the
world! SHE must not, by means of brush or pen, point out to a
corrupt generation the way it is going! Why? Because God has created
her to be the helpmate of man! Excellent reason! Man is taking a
direct straight road to destruction, and she must not stop him by so
much as lifting a warning finger! Again, why? Only because she is a
woman! But I--were I twenty times a woman, twenty times weaker than
I am, and hampered by every sort of convention and usage,--I would
express my thoughts somehow, or die in the attempt!"

"BRAVISSIMA!" exclaimed Vergniaud, "Well said, chere Sovrani!--Well
said! But I am the mocking demon always, as you know--and I should
almost be tempted to say that you WILL die in the attempt! I do not
mean that you will die physically,--no, you will probably live to a
good old age; people who suffer always do!--but you will die in the
allegorical sense. You will grow the stigmata of the Saviour in your
hands and feet--you will bear terrible marks of the nails hammered
into your flesh by your dearest friends! You will have to wear a
crown of thorns, set on your brows no doubt by those whom you most
love . . . and the vinegar and gall will be very quickly mixed and
offered to you by the whole world of criticism without a moment's
hesitation! And will probably have to endure your agony alone,--as
nearly everyone runs away from a declared Truth, orif they pause at
all, it is only to spit upon it and call it a Lie!"

"Do not prophesy so cruel a fate for the child!" said the Cardinal
tenderly, taking Angela's hand and drawing her towards him. "She has
a great gift,--I am sure she will use it greatly. And true greatness
is always acknowledged in the end."

"Yes, when the author or the artist has been in the grave for a
hundred years or more;" said Vergniaud incorrigibly. "I am not sure
that it would not be better for Donna Sovrani's happiness to marry
the amiable Florian Varillo at once rather than paint her great
picture! Do you not agree with me, Mr. Leigh?"

Leigh was turning over an old volume of prints in a desultory and
abstracted fashion, but on being addressed, looked up quickly.

"I would rather not presume to give an opinion," he said somewhat
coldly, "It is only on the rarest occasions that a woman's life is
balanced between love and fame,--and the two gifts are seldom
bestowed together. She generally has to choose between them. If she
accepts love she is often compelled to forego fame, because she
merges herself too closely into the existence of another to stand by
her own individuality. If on the other hand, she chooses fame, men
are generally afraid of or jealous of her, and leave her to herself.
Donna Sovrani, however, is a fortunate exception,--she has secured
both fame--and love."

He hesitated a moment before saying the last words, and his brows
contracted a little. But Angela did not see the slight cloud of
vexation that darkened his eyes,--his words pleased her, and she
smiled.

"Ah, Mr. Leigh sees how it is with me!" she said, "He knows what
good cause I have to be happy and to do the best work that is in me!
It is all to make Florian proud of me!--and he IS proud--and he will
be prouder! You must just see this one more sketch taken from life,-
-it is the head of one of our most noted surgeons,--I call it for
the present 'A Vivisectionist'."

It was a wonderful study,--perhaps the strongest of the three she
had shown. It was the portrait of a thin, fine, intellectual face,
which in its every line suggested an intense, and almost dreadful
curiosity. The brows were high, yet narrow,--the eyes clear and
cold, and pitiless in their straight regard,--the lips thin and
compressed,--the nose delicate, with thin open nostrils, like those
of a trained sleuth-hound on the scent of blood. It was a three-
quarter-length picture, showing the hand of the man slightly raised,
and holding a surgeon's knife,--a wonderful hand, rather small, with
fingers that are generally termed "artistic"--and a firm wrist,
which Angela had worked at patiently, carefully delineating the
practised muscles employed and developed in the vivisectiomst's
ghastly business.

Aubrey Leigh stood contemplating it intently.

"I think it is really the finest of all the types," he said
presently, "One can grasp that man's character so thoroughly! There
is no pity in him,--no sentiment--there is merely an insatiable
avidity to break open the great treasure-house of Life by fair means
or foul! It is very terrible--but very powerful."

"I know the man," said Abbe Vergniaud, "Did he sit to you
willingly?"

"Very willingly indeed!" replied Angela, "He was quite amused when I
told him frankly that I wanted him as a type of educated and refined
cruelty."

"Oh, these fellows see nothing reprehensible in their work," said
Leigh, "And such things go on among them as make the strongest man
sick to think of! I know of two cases now in a hospital; the
patients are incurable, but the surgeons have given them hope of
recovery through an 'operation' which, however, in their cases, will
be no 'operation' at all, but simply vivisection. The poor creatures
have to die anyhow, it is true, but death might come to them less
terribly,--the surgeons, however, will 'operate', and kill them a
little more quickly, in order to grasp certain unknown
technicalities of their disease."

Angela looked at him with wide-open eyes of pain and amazement.

"Horrible!" she murmured, "Absolutely horrible! Can nothing be done
to interfere with, or to stop such cruelty?"

"Nothing, I fear," said Leigh, "I have been abroad some time,
studying various 'phases', of its so-called intellectual and
scientific life, and have found many of these phases nothing but an
output of masked barbarity. The savages of Thibet are more pitiful
than the French or Italian vivisectionist,--and the horrors that go
on in the laboratories would not be believed if they were told.
Would not be believed! They would be flatly denied, even by the men
who are engaged in them! And were I to write a plain statement of
what I know to be true, and send it to an English journal, it would
not be put in, not even in support of the Anti-Vivisection Society,
lest it might 'offend' the foreign schools of surgery, and also
perhaps lest English schools might prove not altogether free from
similar crimes. If, however, by chance, such a statement were
published, it would be met with an indignant chorus of denial from
every quarter of accusation! How, then, can justice be obtained from
what I call the New Inquisition? The old-time Inquisitors tortured
their kind for Religion's sake,--the modern ones do it in the name
of Science,--but the inhumanity, the callousness, the inborn savage
love of cruelty--are all the same in both instances."

Cardinal Bonpre shuddered as he heard.

"Lord Christ, where art thou!" he thought, "Where is Thy spirit of
unfailing tenderness and care? How is Thy command of 'love one
another' obeyed!" Aloud he said, "Surely such deeds, even in the
cause of surgical science, ought not to be permitted in a Christian
city?"

"Christian city!" and Vergniaud laughed, "You would not apply that
designation to Paris, would you? Paris is hopelessly, riotously
pagan;--nay, not even pagan, for the pagans had gods and Paris has
none! Neither Jove--nor Jupiter--nor Jehovah! As for the Christ,--He
is made the subject of many a public caricature,--yes!--you may see
them in the side-streets pasted upon the walls and hoardings!--and
also of many a low lampoon;--but He is not accepted as a Teacher,
nor even as an Example. His reign is over, in Paris at least!"

"Stop!" said the Cardinal, rising suddenly, "I forbid you,
Vergniaud, to tell me these things! If they are true, then shame
upon you and upon all the clergy of this unhappy city to stand by
and let such disgrace to yourselves, and blasphemy to our Master,
exist without protest!"

His tall spare figure assumed a commanding grandeur and authority,--
his pale face flushed and his eyes sparkled--he looked inspired--
superb--a very apostle burning with righteous indignation. His words
seemed to have the effect of an electric shock on the Abbe,--he
started as though stung by the lash of a whip, and drew himself up
haughtily . . . then meeting the Cardinal's straight glance, his head
drooped, and he stood mute and rigid. Leigh, though conscious of
embarrassment as the witness of a strong reproof administered by one
dignitary of the Church to another, yet felt deeply interested in
the scene,--Angela shrank back trembling,--and for a few moments
which, though so brief, seemed painfully long, there was a dead
silence. Then Verginaud spoke in low stifled accents.

"You are perfectly right, Monseigneur! It IS shame to me!--and to
the priesthood of France! I am no worse than the rest of my class,--
but I am certainly no better! Your reproach is grand,--and just! I
accept it, and ask your pardon!"

He bent one knee, touched the Cardinal's ring with his lips, and
then without another word turned and left the room. The Cardinal
gazed after his retreating figure like a man in a dream, then he
said gently,

"Angela, go after him!--Call him back!--"

But it was too late. Vergniaud had left the house before Angela
could overtake him. She came back hurriedly to say so, with a pale
face and troubled look. Her uncle patted her kindly on the shoulder.

"Well, well!--It will not hurt him to have seen me angry," he said
smiling, "Anger in a just cause is permitted. I seem to have
frightened you, Angela? Of a truth I have rather frightened myself!
There, we will not talk any more of the evils of Paris. Mr. Leigh
perhaps thinks me an intolerant Christian?"

"On the contrary I think you are one of the few 'faithful' that I
have ever met," said Leigh, "Of course I am out of it in a way,
because I do not belong to the Roman Church. I am supposed--I say
'supposed' advisedly--to be a Church of England man, or to put it
more comprehensively, a Protestant, and I certainly am so much of
the latter that I protest against all our systems altogether!"

"Is that quite just?" asked Bonpre gently.

"Perhaps not!--but what is one to do? I am not alone in my ideas!
One of our English bishops has been latterly deploring the fact that
out of a thousand lads in a certain parish nine-hundred-and-ninety-
nine of them never go to church! Well, what can you expect? I do not
blame those nine-hundred and-ninety-nine at all. I am one with them.
_I_ never go to church."

"Why?"

"Simply because I never find any touch of the true Spirit of Christ
there--and the whole tone of the place makes me feel distinctly un-
Christian. The nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine youths possibly would
sympathise with me. A church is a building more or less beautiful or
ugly as the case may be, and in the building there is generally a
man who reads prayers in a sing-song tone of voice, and perhaps
another man who preaches without eloquence on some text which he
utterly fails to see the true symbolical meaning of. There are no
Charles Kingsleys nowadays,--if there were, I should call myself a
'Kingsleyite'. But as matters stand I am not moved by the church to
feel religious. I would rather sit quietly in the fields and hear
the gentle leaves whispering their joys and thanksgivings above my
head, than listen to a human creature who has not even the education
to comprehend the simplest teachings of nature, daring to assert
himself as a teacher of the Divine. My own chief object in life has
been and still is to speak on this and similar subjects to the
people who are groping after lost Christianity. They need helping,
and I want to try in my way to help them."