Books: The Master Christian

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Master Christian

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"Why, what can be worse?"

"Well, sir, we thinks--we ain't got proofs to go on--for Bessie
keeps her own counsel--but we thinks the passon hisself is the
father of that there little thing he winnot lay in a holy grave!"

"Good God!" cried Aubrey.

"Ay, ay--you may say 'Good God!' with a meaning, sir," said the
leather-seller--"And that's why, as we ain't got no facts and no
power with bishops, and we ain't able to get at the passon anyhow,
we're just making it as unpleasant for him in our way as we can.
That's all the people can do, sir, but what they does, they means!"

This incident deeply impressed Aubrey Leigh, and proved to be the
turning point in his career. Like a flash of light illumining some
divinely written scroll of duty, he suddenly perceived a way in
which to shape his own life and make it of assistance to others. He
began his plan of campaign by going about among the poorer classes,
working as they worked, living as they lived, and enduring what they
endured. Disguised as a tramp, he wandered with tramps. He became
for a time one of the "hands" in a huge Birmingham factory. After
that he worked for several months at the coal pits among the lowest
of the men employed there. Then he got a "job" in a dock-yard and
studied the ways of shipping and humanity together. During this time
of self-imposed probation, he never failed to write letters home to
Canada, saying he was "doing well" in England, but how this "doing
well" was brought about he never explained. And the actual motive
and end of all his experiences was as yet a secret locked within his
own heart. Yet when it was put into words it sounded simple enough,-
-it was merely to find out how much or how little the clergy, or so-
called "servants of Christ", obeyed their Master. Did they comfort
the comfortless? Were they "wise as serpents, and harmless as
doves"? Were they long-suffering, slow to wrath, and forbearing one
to the other? Did they truly "feed the sheep"? Did they sacrifice
themselves, their feelings, and their ambitions to rescue what was
lost? All these and sundry other questions Aubrey Leigh set himself
to answer,--and by and by he found himself on an endless path of
discovery, where at every step some new truth confronted him;--some
amazing hypocrisy burned itself in letters of flame against the
splendour of church altars;--some deed of darkness and bigotry and
cruelty smirched the white robes of the "ordained to preach the
Gospel". Gradually he became so intently and vitally interested in
his investigations, and his sympathy for the uncomforted people who
had somehow lost Christ instead of finding Him, grew so keen that he
resolved to give up his entire life to the work of beginning to try
and remedy the evil. He had no independent means,--he lived from
hand to mouth earning just what he could by hard labour,--till one
day, when the forces in his own soul said "Ready!" he betook himself
to one small room which he hired in a fisherman's cottage on the
coast of Cornwall, and there sat down to write a book. Half the day
he wrote, and half the day he earned his bread as a common
fisherman, going out with the others in storm and shine, sailing
through sleet and hail and snow, battling with the waves, and
playing with Death at every turn of the rocks, which, like the teeth
of great monsters, jagged the stormy shore. And he grew strong, and
lithe, and muscular--his outward life of hard and changeful labour,
accompanied by the inward life of intelligent and creative thought,
gradually worked off all depression of soul and effeminacy of body,-
-his experience of the stage passed away, leaving no trace on his
mind but the art, the colour and the method,--particularly the
method of speech. With art, colour, and method he used the pen;--
with the same art, colour, and method he used his voice, and
practised the powers of oratory. He would walk for miles to any
lonely place where he could be sure of no interruption,--and there
he would speak aloud to the roaring waves and wide stretches of
desolate land, and tell them the trenchant things he meant one day
to thunder into human ears. Always of a fine figure, his bearing
grew more dauntless and graceful,--the dangers of the sea taught him
self-control,--the swift changes of the sky gave him the far-off
rapt expression and keen flash of his eyes,--the pitiful sorrows of
the poor, in which, as he had elected to be one of them, he was
bound to share, had deepened the sympathetic lines round his
delicate mouth, and had bestowed upon his whole countenance that
look which is seldom seen save in the classic marbles--the look of
being one with, and yet above mankind. All the different classes of
people with whom he had managed to associate had called him
"gentleman", a name he had gently but firmly repudiated. "Call me a
Man, and let me deserve the title!" he would say smilingly, and his
"mates" hearing this would eye each other askance, and whisper among
themselves "that he WAS a gentleman for all that, though no doubt he
had come down in the world and had to work for his living. And no
shame to him as he gave himself no airs, and could turn a hand to
anything." And so the time moved on, and he remained in the Cornish
fishing village till his book was finished. Then he suddenly went up
to London;--and after a few days' absence came back again, and went
contentedly on with the fishing once more.

A month or so later, one night when the blackness of the skies was
so dense that it could almost be felt, it chanced that he and his
companions were far out at sea in their little smack, which lay
becalmed between two darknesses--the darkness of the rolling water,
and the darkness of the still heaven. Little waves lapped heavily
against the boat's side, and the only glimpse of light at all was
the yellow flicker of the lamp that hung from the mast of the
vessel, casting a tremulous flicker on the sombrous tide, when all
at once a great noise like the crash of thunder, or the roll of
cannon, echoed through the air, and a meteor more brilliant than an
imperial crown of diamonds, flared through the sky from height to
depth, and with a blazing coruscation of flying stars and flame,
dropped hissingly down into the sea. The fishermen startled, all
looked up--the heavy black nets dropped from their brown arms just
as they were about to pull in.

"A sign of strife!" said one.

"Ay, ay! We shall hev a war maybe!"

Aubrey leaned far over the boat's side, and looked out into the
dense blackness, made blacker than ever by the sudden coming and
going of the flaming sky-phenomenon,--and half unconsciously he
murmured, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth,--I come
not to send peace, but a sword!" And he lost himself in dreams of
the past, present, and future,--till he was roused to give a hand in
the dragging up of the nets, now full of glistening fish with
silvery bodies and ruby eyes,--and then his thoughts took a
different turn and wandered off as far back as the Sea of Galilee
when the disciples, fishing thus, were called by the Divine Voice,
saying "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!" And in
silence he helped to row the laden boat homewards, for there was no
wind to fill the sail,--and the morning gradually broke like a great
rose blooming out of the east, and the sun came peering through the
rose like the calyx of the flower,--and still in a dream, Aubrey
walked through all that splendour of the early day home to his
lodging,--there to find himself,--like Byron,--famous. His book was
in everyone's hand--his name on everyone's tongue. Letters from the
publisher whom his visit to London had made his friend, accompanied
by a bundle of the chief newspapers of the day, informed him that he
had in one bound taken his place at the very head and front of
opinion,--and, finest proof of power, the critics were out like the
hounds in full cry, and were already baying the noble quarry. The
Church papers were up in arms--indignant articles were being added
to the "weeklies" by highly respectable clergymen with a large
feminine "following", and in the midst of all these written things,
which in their silent print seemed literally to make a loud clamour
in the quiet of his room, Aubrey, in his sea-stained fisherman's
garb, with the sparkle of the salt spray still glittering on his
closely curling bright hair, looked out at the clear horizon from
which the sun had risen up in all its majesty, and devoutly thanked
God!

"I have written part of my message," he said to himself, "And now
by-and-by I shall speak!"

But he lived on yet for a time in the remote fishing village,
waiting,--without knowing quite what he waited for,--while the great
Gargantuan mouth of London roared his name in every imaginable key,
high and low, and gradually swept it across the seas to America and
Australia, and all the vast New World that is so swiftly rising up,
with the eternal balance of things, to overwhelm the Old. And
presently the rumour of his fame reached those whom he had left
behind in the quiet little town of his birth and boyhood,--and his
mother, reading the frantic eulogies, and still more frantic attacks
of the different sections of press opinion, wept with excitement and
tenderness and yearning; and his father, startled at the strange
power and authority with which this new Apostle of Truth appeared to
be invested, trembled as he read, but nevertheless held himself more
erect with a pride in his own old age that he had never felt before,
as he said a hundred times a day in response to eager questioners--
"Yes,--Aubrey Leigh is my son!" Then mother and father both wrote to
Aubrey, and poured out their affectionate hearts to him and blessed
him, which blessing he received with that strange heaving of the
heart and contraction of the throat, which in a strong man means
tears. And still he waited on, earning his bread in the humble
village which knew nothing of him, save as one of themselves,--for
the inhabitants of the place were deaf and blind to the ways of the
world, and read little save old and belated newspapers, so that they
were ignorant of his newly celebrated personality,--till one day the
Fates gave him that chance for which, though he was unconscious of
it, he had been holding himself back, and counting the slow strokes
of time;--time which seems to beat with such a laggard pulse when
one sees some great thing needing to be done, and while feeling all
the force to do it, yet has to control and keep back that force till
the appointed hour strikes for action.

There had been a terrific storm at sea, and a herring smack had gone
down within sight of land, sinking eight strong men with it, all
husbands and fathers. One after the other, the eight bodies were
thrown back from the surging deep in the sullen grey morning on the
day after the catastrophe,--one after the other they were borne
reverently up from the shore to the village, there to be claimed by
shrieking women and sobbing children,--women, who from more or less
contented, simple-hearted, hard-working souls, were transformed into
the grandly infuriated forms of Greek tragedy--their arms tossing,
their hair streaming, their faces haggard with pain, and their eyes
blind with tears. Throughout the heart-rending scene, Aubrey Leigh
worked silently with the rest--composing the stiff limbs of the
dead, and reverently closing the glared and staring eyes; gently he
had lifted fainting women from the corpses to which they clung,--
tenderly he had carried crying children home to their beds,--and
with sorrowful eyes fixed on the still heaving and angry billows, he
had inwardly prayed for ways and means to comfort these afflicted
ones, and raised their thoughts from the gloom of the grave to some
higher consummation of life. For they were inconsolable,--they could
neither see nor understand any adequate cause for such grief being
inflicted on them,--and the entire little population of the village
wore a resentful attitude towards God, and God's inexorable law of
death. When the funeral day came, and the bodies of the eight
unfortunate victims were committed to the earth, it happened, as
fate would have it, that the rector of the parish, a kindly,
sympathetic, very simple old man, who really did his best for his
parishoners according to the faint perception of holy things that
indistinctly illumined his brain, happened to be away, and his place
was taken by the assistant curate, a man of irritable and hasty
temper, who had a horror of "scenes," and who always put away all
suggestions of death from him whenever it was possible. It was very
disagreeable to him to have to look at eight coffins,--and still
more disagreeable to see eight weeping widows surrounded by forlorn
and fatherless children--and he gabbled over the funeral service as
quickly as he could, keeping his eyes well on the book lest he
should see some sobbing child looking at him, or some woman dropping
in a dead faint before he had time to finish. He was afraid of
unpleasant incidents--and yet with all his brusque and nervous hurry
to avoid anything of the kind, an unpleasant incident insisted on
manifesting itself. Just as the fourth coffin was being lowered into
the ground, a wild-haired girl rushed forward and threw herself upon
it.

"Oh, my man, my man!" she wailed, "My own sweetheart!"

There was a moment's silence. Then one of the widows stepped out,
and approaching the girl, laid her hand on her arm.

"Are ye making a mock of me, Mary Bell?" she said, "Or is it God's
truth ye're speaking to my husband lying there?"

The distraught creature called Mary Bell looked up with a sudden
passion glowing in her tear-wet eyes.

"It's God's truth!" she cried, "And ye needn't look scorn on me!--
for both our hearts are broken, and no one can ever mend them. Yes!
It's God's truth! He was your husband, but my sweetheart! And we'll
neither of us see a finer man again!"

The curate listened, amazed and aghast. Was nothing going to be done
to stop this scandalous scene? He looked protestingly from right to
left, but in all the group of fisher-folk not a man moved. Were
these two women going to fight over the dead? He hummed and hawed--
and began in a thin piercing voice--"My friends--" when he was again
interrupted by the passionate speech of Mary Bell.

"I'm sorry for ye," she said, lifting herself from the coffin to
which she clung, and turning upon the widow of the drowned man, "and
ye can be just as sorry for me! He loved us both, and why should we
quarrel! A man is ever like that--just chancy and changeful--but he
tried his honest hardest not to love me--yes, he tried hard!--it was
my fault! for I never tried!--I loved him!--and I'll love him, till
I go where he is gone! And we'll see who God'll give his soul to!"

This was too much for the curate.

"Woman!" he thundered, "Be silent! How dare you boast of your sin at
such a time, and in such a place! Take her away from that coffin,
some of you!"

So he commanded, but still not a man moved. The curate began to lose
temper in earnest.

"Take her away, I tell you," and he advanced a step or two, "I
cannot permit such a scandalous interruption of this service!"

"Patience, patience, measter," said one of the men standing by,
"When a woman's heart's broke in two ways it ain't no use worrying
her. She'll come right of herself in a minute."

But the curate, never famous for forbearance at any time, was not to
be tampered with. Turning to his verger he said,

"I refuse to go on! The woman is drunk!"

But now the widow of the dead man suddenly took up the argument in a
shrill voice which almost tore the air to shreds.

"She's no more drunk than you are!" she cried passionately, "Leave
her alone! You're a nice sort of God's serving man to comfort we,
when we're all nigh on losing our wits over this mornin' o' misery,
shame on ye! Mary Bell, come here! If so be as my husband was your
sweetheart, God forgive him, ye shall come home wi' me!--and we'll
never have a word agin the man who is lying dead there. Come wi' me,
Mary!"

With a wild cry of anguish, the girl rushed into her arms, and the
two women clung together like sisters united in the same passionate
grief. The curate turned a livid white.

"I cannot countenance such immorality," he said, addressing the
verger, though his words were heard by all present, "Enough of the
service has been said! Lower the coffins into the earth!" and
turning on his heel he prepared to walk away. But Aubrey Leigh
stopped him.

"You will not finish the service, sir?" he asked civilly, but with
something of a warning in the flash of his eyes.

"No! The principal part of it is over. I cannot go on. These women
are drunk!"

"They are not drunk, save with their own tears!" said Aubrey, his
rich voice trembling with indignation. "They are not mad, except
with grief! Is it not your place to be patient with them?"

"My place! My place!" echoed the curate indignantly, "Man, do you
know to whom you are talking?"

"I think I do," answered Aubrey steadily, "I am talking to a
professed servant of Christ,--Christ who had patience and pardon for
all men! I am talking to one whose calling and vocation it is to
love, to forgive, and to forbear--whose absolute protestation has
been made at the altar of God that he will faithfully obey his
Master. Even if these unhappy women were drunk, which they are not,
their fault in conduct would not release you from the performance of
your duty,--or the reverence you are bound to show towards the
dead!"

Trembling with rage, the curate eyed him up and down scornfully.

"How dare you speak to me about my duty! You common lout! Mind your
own business!"

"I will," said Aubrey, fixing his eyes full upon him, "And it shall
be my business to see that you mind yours! Both your rector and
bishop shall hear of this!"

He strode off, leaving the curate speechless with fury; and joining
the little crowd of mourners who had been startled and interrupted
by this unexpected scene, drew a prayer book from his pocket, and
without asking anyone's permission read with exquisite gravity and
pathos the concluding words of the funeral service,--and then with
his own hands assisted the grave-diggers to lay the coffined dead
tenderly to rest. Awestruck, and deeply impressed by his manner the
fisher-folk mechanically obeyed his instructions, and followed his
movements till all the sad business was over, and then they lingered
about the churchyard wistfully watching him, while he in turn,
standing erect and bare-headed near the open graves, looked at them
with a strange pity, love and yearning.

"It'll be all right when our owld passon comes back," said one of
the men addressing him, "It's just this half eddicated wastrel of a
chap as doesn't know, and doesn't care for the troubles of common
folk like we."

Aubrey was silent for a space. "Common folk like we!" The words were
full of pathetic humility, and the man who spoke them was a hero of
no mean type, who had often buffeted the winds and waves to save a
human life at the risk of his own. "Common folk like we!" Aubrey
laid his hand gently on his "mate's" shoulder.

"Ben, old boy, there are no common folk in God's sight," he said,
"Look there!" and he pointed to the graves that were just beginning
to be filled in, "Every creature lying there had as much of God in
him as many a king, and perhaps more. In this majestic universe
there is nothing common!"

Ben shuffled one foot before the other uneasily.

"Ay, ay, but there's few as argify the way o' life in they lines!"
he said, "There's a many that think--but there's a main few that
speak."

"That is true," said Aubrey, still keeping his hand on Ben's
shoulder, "there's a main few that speak! Now, _I_ want to speak,
Ben,--I want to have a talk to you and the rest of our mates about--
well!--about the dangers of the sea and other things. Will you meet
me on the shore this evening near the quay and listen to a word or
two?"

Ben looked surprised but interested, and a puzzled smile came into
his eyes.

"Be ye a goin' to preach to us like the passon?" he said, "Or like
the fellers in the porter's caps as calls themselves Salvationists?"

Aubrey smiled.

"No! I only want to say a few parting words to you all."

"Parting words!" echoed Ben with a stupefied air.

"Yes--I am going away to-morrow--going for good. I have got some
other work to do. But I shall not forget you all . . . and you will hear
of me often,--yes, you will hear of me!--and some day I will come
back. But to-night . . . I should just like to say good-bye."

Ben was secretly much distressed. "Gentleman Leigh" as he was
sometimes called, had greatly endeared himself to their little
community, and that he should leave them was not at all a desirable
thing, and would, as Ben well knew, cause universal regret. But
there was no time just now for either argument or protestation, so
Ben accepted the blow as he accepted all buffetings of fate, and
merely said,

"All right! We'll be there to-night for sure!" And then Aubrey,
gravely content, walked slowly out of the little churchyard still
bare-headed, his eyes dark with thought,--and the reluctant sun came
out of the gray sky and shone on his pale face and bright hair--and
one or two of the widowed women timidly touched his arm as he
passed, and murmured, "God bless you!" And Mary Bell, the sorrowful
and sinning, clinging to the waist of the woman she had wronged,
looked up at him appealingly with the strained and hunted gaze of a
lost and desperate creature, and as he met her eyes, turned
shudderingly away and wept. And he, knowing that words were useless,
and that even the kindliest looks must wound in such a case, passed
on in silence, and when he reached his own lodging took some of the
newspapers which spoke of himself and his book, and after marking
certain passages, tied them up in a packet and sent them to the
curate with whom he had crossed swords that morning, accompanied by
a note which briefly ran thus:--

"You asked me how I 'dared' to speak to you about your duty. I
reply--By the force of truth and the power of the pen I dare!--and I
shall be ready to answer to God for it, as you must answer to him
for leaving any part of YOUR duty undone.

"AUBREY LEIGH."

And the day passed on, half in drifting clouds, half in glimpses of
sunshine, till late afternoon, when the sky cleared altogether, and
the waves sank to a dead calm;--and with the night a shield-like
moon, all glistening pearl and silver, rose up out of the east with
a royal air of white and wondering innocence, as though she
proclaimed her entire blamelessness for any havoc wrought by storm.
And in the full radiance of that silvery splendour Aubrey Leigh,
leaning against the sea-weed covered capstan of the quay, round
which coils of wet rope glistened like the body of a sleeping
serpent, told to an audience of human hearers for the first time the
story of his life, and adventures, and the varied experiences he had
gone through in order to arrive at some straight and clear
comprehension of "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" of the Gospel of
Love and Mutual Labour. His practised voice, perfect in all
modulation, inflexion, and expression, carried each simple, well-
chosen word home to the hearts of his hearers,--not one so ignorant
as not to understand him--not one so blind as not to see the beauty
of work and creative effort as he depicted them,--not one so
insensate as not to feel the calm, the grandeur, and repose of the
strong soul of a man in complete sympathy with his fellow-men. They
listened to him almost breathlessly--their bronzed weather-beaten
faces all turned towards his; forgetting to smoke, they let their
pipes die out and drop from their hands--and no interruption broke
the even flow and cadence of his earnest language, save the slow
ripple of the water beating against the quay, and the faint,
occasional sigh of a stirring wind. Silhouetted black against the
radiant sky were the masts of the fishing fleet, and the roofs of
the fishermen's cottages--dwellings so often made desolate by death-
-and as Aubrey noted the fascinated attention with which these rough
men heard him, his heart grew strong. "If a few listen, so will
many," he said to himself, "The Master of our creed first taught His
divine ethics to a few fishermen,--to them the message was first
given . . . and by them again delivered,--and it is through our having
departed from the original simplicity of utterance that all the evil
has crept in. So let me be content with this night's work and await
the future with patience." Then lifting up his voice once more he
said,--

"You think your lot a hard one--you, friends and brothers, who set
the brown sails out to sea on a night of threatening storm, and bid
farewell to your homes built safe upon the shore. You must meet all
the horror of white foam and cloud-blackness, to drag from the sea
its living spoil, and earn the bread to keep yourselves and those
who are dependent upon you,--you MUST do this, or the Forces of Life
will not have you,--they will cast you out and refuse to nourish
you. For so is your fate in life, and work ordained. Then where is
God?--you cry, as the merciless billows rise to engulf your frail
craft,--why should the Maker of man so deliberately destroy him? Why
should one human unit, doing nothing, and often thinking nothing,
enjoy hundreds of pounds a day, while you face death to win as many
pence? Is there a God of Love who permits this injustice? Ah, stop
there, friends! There is no such thing as injustice! Strange as it
sounds to this world of many contradictions and perplexities, I
repeat there is no such thing as injustice. There is what SEEMS
injustice--because we are all apt to consider the material side of
things only. That is where we make our great mistake in life and
conduct. We should all remember that this world, and the things of
this world, are but the outward expression of an inward soul--the
Matter evolved from Mind--and that unless we are ourselves in
harmony with the Mind, we shall never understand the Matter. Your
millionaire is surrounded with luxuries,--your fishermen has dry
bread and herring,--your millionaire dies, with a famous doctor
counting his pulse-beats, and a respectable clergyman promising him
heaven on account of the money he has left to the church in his
will; your fisherman goes down in a swirl of black water, without a
prayer--for he has no time to pray--without leaving a penny behind
him, inasmuch as he has no pence to leave; and for both these
different creatures we judge the end is come? No,--the end is NOT
come! It is the beginning only! If the millionaire has died with a
thousand selfish sores in his mind,--if his life's privileges have
been wasted in high feeding and self-indulgence,--if he has thought
only of himself, his riches, his pride, his position, or his
particular form of respectability, he will get the full result of
that mental attitude! If the fisherman has been content with his
earnings, and thanked God for them,--if he has been honest, brave,
true, and unselfish, and has shared with others their joys and
sorrows, and if at the last he goes down in the waves trying to save
some other life while losing his own,--depend upon it he will rise
to the full splendour of THAT mental attitude! For both millionaire
and fisherman are but men, made on the same lines, of the same clay,
and are each one, personally and separately responsible to God for
the soul in them,--and when both of them pass from this phase of
being to the next, they will behold all things with spiritual eyes,
not material ones. And then it may be that the dark will be
discovered to be the bright, and the fortunate prove to be the
deplorable, for at present we 'see through a glass darkly, but then,
face to face.' The friends whom we have buried to-day are not dead,-
-for death is not Death, but Life. And for those who are left behind
it is merely a time of waiting, for as the Master said, 'There shall
not a hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your
souls.'"