Books: The Master Christian

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Master Christian

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He paused a moment,--the moon rays illumined his delicate features,
and a half sorrowful smile rested on his lips.

"I am no clergyman, my friends! I have not been 'ordained'. I am not
preaching to you. I will not ask you to be good men, for there is
something effeminate in the sound of such a request made to brawny,
strong fellows such as you are, with an oath ready to leap from your
lips, and a blow prepared to fly from your fists on provocation. I
will merely say to you that it is a great thing to be a Man!--a Man
as God meant him to be, brave, truthful, and self-reliant, with a
firm faith in the Divine Ordainment of Life as Life should be lived.
There is no disgrace in work;--no commonness,--no meanness.
Disgrace, commonness, and meanness are with those who pretend to
work and never do anything useful for the world they live in. The
king who amuses himself at the expense and ruin of his subjects is
the contemptible person,--not the labourer who digs the soil for the
planting of corn which shall help to feed his fellows. And the most
despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who
doubts Christ, or questions God--for Christ was patient with the
doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every
honest question--it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on
the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession!
That is why you--and why thousands of others like you, are beginning
to look upon many of the clergy with contempt, and to treat their
admonitions with indifference. That is why thousands of the rising
generation of men and women will not go to church. 'The parson does
not do anything for me,' is a common every-day statement. And that
the parson SHOULD do something is a necessary part of his business.
His 'doing' should not consist in talking platitudes from the
pulpit, or in sending round a collection plate. And if he has no
money, and will not 'sell half that he has and give to the poor' as
commanded, he can at any rate give sympathy. But this is precisely
what he chiefly lacks. The parson's general attitude is one of
either superiority or servility,--a 'looking down' upon his poor
parishoners--a 'looking up' to his rich ones. A disinterested,
loving observation of the troubles and difficulties of others never
occurs to him as necessary. But this was precisely the example
Christ gave us--an unselfish example of devotion to others--a
supreme descent of the Divine into man to rescue and bless humanity.
Now I know all your difficulties and sorrows,--I have worked among
you, and lived among you--and I feel the pulse of your existence
beating in my own heart. I know that when a great calamity
overwhelms you all as it has done this week, you have no one to
comfort you,--no one to assure you that no matter how strange and
impossible it seems, you have been deprived of your associates for
some GOOD cause which will be made manifest in due season,--that
they have probably been taken to save them from a worse fate than
the loss of earth-consciousness in the sea. For that, scientifically
speaking, is all that death means--the loss of earth-consciousness,-
-but the gain of another consciousness, whether of another earth or
a heaven none can say. But there is no real death--inasmuch as even
a grain of dust in the air will generate life. We must hold fast to
the Soul of things--the Soul which is immortal, not the body which
is mortal. 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world
and lose his own soul!' That is what each man of us must find, and
hold, and keep,--his own soul! Apart from all creeds, and clergy,
forms and rituals--that is the vital matter. Stand clear of all
things,--all alone if need be, surrounded by the stupendous forces
of this great universe,--let us find,--each man of us--his own soul;
find and keep it brave, truthful, upright, and bound straight on for
the highest,--the highest always! And the very stars in their
courses will help us--storms will but strengthen us--difficulties
but encourage us--and death itself shall but give us larger
liberty."

He ceased, and one by one the men drew closer to him, and thanked
him, in voices that were tremulous with the emotion he had raised in
them. The instinct which had led them to call him "Gentleman Leigh"
had proved correct,--and there was not a man among them all who did
not feel a thrill of almost fraternal pride in the knowledge that
the dauntless, hard-working "mate" who had fronted tempests with
them, and worked with them in all weathers, had without any boast or
loquacious preparation, made his name famous and fit for discussion
in the great world of London far away, a world to which none of them
had ever journeyed. And they pressed round him and shook his hand,
and gave him simple yet hearty words of cheer and goodwill, together
with unaffected expressions of regret that he was leaving them,--
"though for that matter," said one of them, "we allus felt you was a
scholard-like, for all that you was so handy at the nets. For never
did a bit of shell or weed come up from the sea but ye was a lookin'
at it as if God had throwed it to yer for particular notice. And
when a man takes to obsarvin' common things as if they were special
birthday presents from the Almighty, ye may be pretty sure there's
something out of the ordinary in him!"

Aubrey smiled, and pressed the hand of this roughly eloquent
speaker,--and then they all walked with him up from the shore to the
little cottage where he had lived for so many months, and at the
gate of which he bade them farewell.

"But only for a time," he said, "I shall see you all again. And you
will hear of me!"

"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.

"God 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 fashion 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
assemble 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 noble 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 assai, 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
glass 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 glass, "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
brass, 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 washing!"

And a saturnine smile, accompanied by the frowning bend of his white
fuzzy eyebrows over his flashing 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
noble 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
passion, but in worship--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," he was wont to say, "The Church no longer employs great
artists. It keeps its money for speculation purposes. If a Michael
Angelo were in Rome he would find nothing to do."

Which statement was true enough. For the modern Italian loves money
next to his own precious skin, and everything beautiful or sacred is
sacrificed to this insatiable craze. There is no love, no honour, no
patriotism in Italy without careful calculation as to the cost of
indulging in these sentiments,--and what wreck of religion is left
merely panders to the low melodramatic temper of an ignorant
populace. Art is at its lowest ebb, it cannot live without
encouragement and support--and it is difficult for even the most
enthusiastic creator in marble or colour to carry out glorious
conceptions for an inglorious country. But Angela Sovrani--ambitious
Angela,--was not painting for Italy. She was painting for the whole
world. She had dreams of seeing her great picture borne away out of
Rome to Paris, and London, to be gazed upon by thousands who would
take its lesson home to their hearts and lives. Italy was merely a
village in the area of her aspiring mind; but she built her "castles
in the air" alone; and never by so much as the smallest hint allowed
anyone to guess the far reaching scope of her intentions. Truth to
tell, she had obtained very little encouragement during her long
days and months of work, though in the sweetness of her nature she
pleased herself by imagining that Florian Varillo gave her a
complete and perfect sympathy. Yet even with Florian, one or two
casual remarks he had let fall lightly and unthinkingly, had vaguely
startled her, and set her wondering, "Perhaps he does not think much
of my abilities after all"--and had caused her for once to be
closely reserved upon the subject and treatment of her work, and to
refuse a glimpse of it even to him who was her elect Beloved. She
had thought he would perhaps have been pained at this inviolate
secrecy on her part,--she had feared he might take offence at
finding the doors of her studio always locked,--but on the contrary
he appeared quite amused at her uncommunicative humour, and jested
about it as if she were a little child playing in a dark corner at
some forbidden game. She was somewhat surprised at this,--the more
so as he frequently spoke of the importance of his own pictures for
the Roman "Art Season,"--pictures to which he really gave the
attentive discussion and consideration a man always bestows on
matters of his personal business--but often when Angela's work was
spoken of, he smiled with a kindly tolerance, as one who should say,
"Dear girl! How sweetly she embroiders her simple sampler!" And yet
again, he never failed, when asked about it in Angela's presence, to
say that he was "sure Donna Sovrani would astonish the world by what
she was doing!" So that one never quite knew where to have him, his
nature being that curious compound of obsequious servility and
intense self-love which so often distinguishes the Italian
temperament. Angela however put every shadow of either wonder or
doubt as to his views, entirely aside,--and worked on with an
earnest hand and trusting heart, faithfully and with a grand
patience and self-control seldom found either in masculine or
feminine heroes. Sometimes her spirit sank a little, as now, when
her father told her that her picture would remain unsold in one of
the galleries--but all the same, some force within her urged her to
go on with her intention steadily, and leave all results to God. And
the tears that had sprung to her eyes at the smart of old Sovrani's
rough speech, soon returned to their source; and she was quite her
composed sweet self again when her uncle the Cardinal, accompanied
by Manuel, entered the room, holding an open letter in his hand, and
looking strangely agitated.