Books: The Master Christian

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And without further words he hurried off, and tossing a twenty-franc
piece to the sleepy hotel porter who was holding Ruspardi's horse
outside, he flung himself into the saddle and galloped away.
Ruspardi, young and hotblooded, was of too mercurial a disposition
to anticipate any really serious results of the night's adventure;--
his contempt for a coward was far greater than his fear of death,
and he was delighted to think that in all probability the Marquis
would use his riding-whip on Miraudin's back rather than honour him
by a pistol shot. And so dismissing all fears from his mind he took
Fontenelle's letters in his charge, and went straight out of the
hotel singing gaily, charmed with the exciting thought of the
midnight chase which was going on, and the possible drubbing and
discomfiture of the "celebrated" Miraudin.

Meanwhile, under the flashing stars, and through the sleeping
streets of Rome, the Marquis galloped with almost breakneck haste.
He was a daring rider, and the spirited animal he bestrode soon
discovered the force of his governing touch,--the resolve of his
urging speed. He went by the Porta Pia, remembering Ruspardi's
hurried description of the route taken by the runaway actor, and
felt, rather than saw the outline of the Villa Torlonia, as he
rushed past, and the Basilica of St. Agnese Fuori le Mura, which is
supposed to cover the tomb of the child-martyr St. Agnes,--then
across the Ponte Nomentano, till, two miles further on, in the white
radiance of the moon, he perceived, driving rapidly ahead of him,
the vehicle of which he was in pursuit. Letting the reins fall
loosely on the neck of his straining steed, he raised himself in his
stirrups, and by his own movements assisted the animal's now
perfectly reckless gallop,--and at last, hearing the flying hoofs
behind, the driver of the fiacre became seized with panic, and
thinking of possible brigands and how to pacify them, he suddenly
pulled up and came to a dead halt. A head was thrust out of the
carriage window,--Miraudin's head,--and Miraudin's voice shouted in
bad Italian,

"What are you stopping for, rascal! On with you! On with you! Five
hundred francs for your best speed!"

Scarcely had he uttered the words when the Marquis gained the side
of the vehicle, and pulling up his horse till it almost fell in
rearing backwards, he cried furiously,

"Lache! Tu vas te crever sur terre avant je te quitte!"

And he struck his riding-whip full in the actor's face.

Springing out of the fiacre Miraudin confronted his antagonist. His
hat was off--and his countenance, marked as it was with the crimson
line of the lash, lightened with laughter.

"Again! Monsieur le Marquis, je vous salue!" he said, "Kismet! One
cannot escape it! Better to fight with you, beau sire, than with
destiny! I am ready!"

Fontenelle at once dismounted, and tied his horse to the knotted
bough of a half-withered tree. Taking his pistols out of their
holder he proffered them to Miraudin.

"Choose!" he said curtly, "Or use your own if you have any,--but
mine are loaded,--take care yours are! Play no theatrical tricks on
such a stage as this! "And then he gave a comprehensive wave of his
hand towards the desolate waste of the Campagna around them, and the
faint blue misty lines of the Alban hills just rimmed with silver in
the rays of the moon.

At the first sight of the pistols the driver of the fiacre, who had
been more or less stupefied till now, by the suddenness of the
adventure, gave a sort of whining cry, and climbing down from his
box fell on his knees before Miraudin, and then ran a few paces and
did the same thing in front of the Marquis, imploring both men not
to fight,--not to get killed, on account of the trouble it would
cause to him, the coachman;--and with a high falsetto shriek a lady
flung herself out of the recesses of the closed vehicle, and clung
to the actor's arm.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! What is it you would do?" she cried, "Be killed
out here on the Campagna? and not a soul in sight--not a house--not
a shelter? And what is to become of me!--Me!--Me!--" and she tapped
her heaving bosom in melodramatic style, "Have you thought of ME?"

"You--you!" laughed Miraudin, tearing off the lace veil which she
wore wrapped loosely round her head and shoulders, "You, Jeanne
Richaud! What is to become of you? The same fate will attend you
that attends all such little moths of the footlights! Perhaps a
dozen more lovers after me--then old age, and the care of a third-
class lodging-house for broken-down actors!" Here he chose his
weapon. "At your service, Marquis!"

Jeanne Richaud, a soubrette, whose chief stock-in-trade had been her
large dark eyes and shapely legs, uttered a desperate scream, and
threw herself at the feet of the Marquis Fontenelle.

"Monsieur! Monsieur! Think for a moment! This combat is unequal--out
of rule! You are a gentleman,--a man of honour!--would you fight
without seconds? It is murder--murder--!"

Here she broke off, terrified in spite of herself by the
immovability of Fontenelle's attitude, and the coldness of his eyes.

"I regret to pain you, Madame," he said stiffly, "This combat was
arranged according to rule between Monsieur Miraudin and myself some
hours since--and though it seems he did not intend to keep his
engagement I intend to keep mine! The principals in the fight are
here,--seconds are, as their name implies, a secondary matter. We
must do without them."

"By no means!" exclaimed Miraudin, "We have them! Here they are!
You, Jeanne, will you be my second--how often you have seconded me
in many a devil's game--and you--cochon d'un cocher!--you will for
once in your life support the honour of a Marquis!"

And with these words he seized the unhappy Roman cab-driver by the
collar of his coat, and flung him towards Fontenelle, who took not
the slightest notice of him as he lay huddled up and wailing on the
grass, but merely stood his ground, silently waiting. Mademoiselle
Jeanne Richaud however was not so easily disposed of. Throwing
herself on the cold ground, thick with the dust of dead Caesars, she
clung to Miraudin, pouring out a torrent of vociferous French,
largely intermixed with a special slang of the Paris streets, and
broken by the hysterical yells when she saw her "protector" throw
off his coat, and, standing in his shirt-sleeves, take close
observation of the pistol he held.

"Is this your care of me?" she cried, "Mon Dieu! What a thing is a
man! Here am I alone in a strange country--and you endanger your
life for some quarrel of which I know nothing,--yet you pretend to
love me! Nom de Jesus! What is your love!"

"You do well to ask," said Miraudin, laughing carelessly, "What is
my love! A passing fancy, chere petite! We actors simulate love too
well to ever feel it! Out of the way, jou-jou! Your life will be
amusing so long as you keep a little beaute de diable. After that--
the lodging-house!"

He pushed her aside, but she still clung pertinaciously to his arm.

"Victor! Victor!" she wailed, "Will you not look at me--will you not
kiss me!"

Miraudin wheeled round, and stared at her amazed.

"Kiss you!" he echoed, "Pardieu! Would you care! Jeanne! Jeanne! You
are a little mad,--the moonlight is too much for you! To-morrow I
will kiss you, when the sun rises--or if I am not here--why,
somebody else will!"

"Who is the woman you are fighting for?" she suddenly demanded,
springing up from her crouching position with flushed cheeks and
flashing eyes. Miraudin looked at her with nonchalant admiration.

"I wish you would have looked like that sometimes on my stage," he
said, "You would have brought down the house! 'Woman!' No 'woman' at
all, but WOMEN! The glamour of them--the witchery of them--women!--
the madness of them! Women!--The ONE woman saves when the ONE woman
exists, but then,--we generally kill HER! Now, once more, Jeanne,--
out of the way! Time flies, and Monsieur le Marquis is in haste. He
has many fashionable engagements!"

He flashed upon her a look from the bright amorous hazel eyes, that
were potent to command and difficult to resist, and she cowered
back, trembling and sobbing hysterically as the Marquis advanced.

"You are ready?" he enquired civilly.

"Ready!"

"Shall we say twelve paces?"

"Excellent!"

Deliberately Fontenelle dug his heel into the ground and measured
twelve paces from that mark between himself and his antagonist. Then
with cold courtesy he stood aside for Miraudin to assure himself
that the measurement was correct. The actor complied with this
formality in a sufficiently composed way, and with a certain grace
and dignity which Fontenelle might almost have taken for bravery if
he had not been so convinced that the man was "acting" still in his
mind, and was going through a "part" which he disliked, but which he
was forced to play. And with it all there was something indefinable
about him--something familiar in the turn of his head, the glance of
his eye, the movement of his body, which annoyed Fontenelle, because
he saw in all these little personal touches such a strong
resemblance to himself. But there was now no time to think, as the
moment for the combat drew near. Jeanne Richaud was still weeping
hysterically and expostulating with the cab-driver, who paid no
attention whatsoever to her pleadings, but remained obstinately on
his knees out of harm's way, begging the "Santissima Madonna" and
all his "patron saints" to see him safely with his fiacre back to
the city. That was all he cared for.

"We have no one to give us a signal," said Miraudin lightly, "But
there is a cloud on the moon. When it passes, shall we fire?"

The Marquis bowed assent.

For a moment the moon-rays were obscured,--and a faint sigh from the
wind stirred the long dry grass. A bat flew by, scurrying towards
the Catacombs of Alexander,--a shadow lay upon the land. The
combatants,--so singularly alike in form and feature,--stood rigidly
in position, their weapons raised,--their only witnesses a cabman
and a wanton, both creatures terrified out of their wits for
themselves and their own safety. Swiftly the cloud passed--and a
brilliant silver glory was poured out on hill and plain and broken
column,--and as it shone, the two shots were fired simultaneously--
the two bullets whizzed through the air. A light puff of smoke rose
in the moonbeams--it cleared--and Miraudin reeled backwards and fell
heavily to the ground. Fontenelle stood upright, but staggered a
little,--instinctively putting his hand to his breast. Jeanne
Richaud rushed to the side of her fallen lover.

"Victor! Victor!"

Miraudin struggled up to a half sitting position--the blood was
welling up thickly from a wound in his lungs. Half suffocated as he
was, he made a strong effort to speak, and succeeded.

"Not you--not you!" he gasped, "Do not touch me! Do not come near
me! Him!--him!" And he pointed to Fontenelle who still stood erect,
swaying slightly to and fro with a dazed far-off look in his eyes--
but now--as the frenzied soubrette beckoned him, he moved unsteadily
to the side of his mortally wounded opponent, and there, through
weakness, not emotion, dropped on his knees. Miraudin looked at him
with staring filmy eyes.

"How I have hated you, Monsieur le Marquis!" he muttered thickly,
"How I have hated you! Yes--as Cain hated Abel! For we--we are
brothers as they were--born of the same father--ah! You start!" for
Fontenelle uttered a gasping cry--"Yes--in spite of your pride, your
lineage, your insolent air of superiority--YOUR father was MY
father!--the late Marquis was no more satisfied with one wife than
any of us are!--and had no higher code of honour! YOUR mother was a
grande dame,--MINE was a 'light o' love' like this feeble creature!"
and he turned his glance for a moment on the shuddering, wailing
Jeanne Richaud. "YOU were the legal Marquis--_I_ the illegal
genius! . . . yes--genius--!"

He broke off, struggling for breath.

"Do you hear me?" he whispered thickly, "Do you hear?"

"I hear," answered Fontenelle, speaking with difficulty, "You have
hated me, you say--hate me no more!--for hate is done with--and love
also!--I am--dying!"

He grasped the rank grass with both hands in sudden agony, and his
face grew livid. Miraudin turned himself on one arm.

"Dying! You, too! By Heaven! Then the Marquisate must perish! I
should have fired in the air--but--but the sins of the
fathers . . . what is it?" Here a ghastly smile passed over his
features, "The sins of the fathers--are visited on the children!
What a merciful Deity it is, to make such an arrangement!--and the
excellent fathers!--when all the children meet them--I wonder what
they will have to say to each other I wonder . . ." A frightful shudder
convulsed his body and he threw up his arms.

"'Un peu d'amour,
Et puis--bon soir!'

C'est ca! Bon soir, Marquis!"

A great sigh broke from his lips, through which the discoloured
blood began to ooze slowly--he was dead. And Fontenelle, whose wound
bled inwardly, turned himself wearily round to gaze on the rigid
face upturned to the moon. His brother's face! So like his own! He
was not conscious himself of any great pain--he felt a dizzy languor
and a drowsiness as of dreams--but he knew what the dreaming meant,-
-he knew that he would soon sleep to wake again--but where? He did
not see that the woman who had professed to love Miraudin had
already rushed away from his corpse in terror, and was entreating
the cabman to drive her quickly from the scene of combat,--he
realised nothing save the white moonbeams on the still face of the
man who in God's sight had been his brother. Fainter and still
fainter grew his breath--but he felt near his heart for a little
crumpled knot of filmy lace which he always carried--a delicate
trifle which had fallen from one of Sylvie's pretty evening gowns
once, when he had caught her in his arms and sworn his passion. He
kissed it now, and inhaled its violet perfume--as he took it from
his lips he saw that it was stained with blood. The heavy languor
upon him grew heavier--and in the dark haze which began to float
before his eyes he saw women's faces, some beautiful, some devilish,
yet all familiar,--he felt himself sinking--sinking into some deep
abyss of shadows, so dark and dreary that he shuddered with the icy
cold and horror, till Sylvie came, yes!--Sylvie's soft eyes shone
upon him, full of the pity and tenderness of some divine angel near
God's throne,--an angel of sweetness--an angel of forgiveness--ah!--
so sweet she was, so childlike, so trusting, so fair, so enticing in
those exquisite ways of hers which had pleaded with him, prayed to
him, tried to draw him back from evil, and incite him to noble
thought; "ways" that would have persuaded him to cleanse his flag of
honour from the mud of social vice and folly, and lift it to the
heavens white and pure! Ah, sweet ways!--sweet voice!--sweet woman!-
-sweet possibilities of life now gone forever! Again that sinking,--
that icy chill! His eyes were closing--yet he forced himself to open
them as he sank back heavily on the turf, and then--then he saw the
great white moon descending on him as it seemed, like a shield of
silver flung down to crush him, by some angry god!

"Sylvie!--Sylvie!" he muttered, "I never knew--how much I loved you-
-till-now! Sylvie!"

His eyes closed--a little smile flickered on his mouth for a moment-
-and then the Shadow fell. And he lay stark and pallid in the
moonlight, close to the brother he had never known till the last
hour of life had revealed the bond of blood between them. Side by
side they lay,--strangely alike in death,--men to whom the
possibilities of noble living had been abundantly given, and who had
wasted all their substance on vanity. For Victor Miraudin, despite
his genius and the brilliancy of his art, was not likely to be
longer remembered or mourned than the Marquis Fontenelle. The fame
of the actor is even less than that of the great noble,--the actor's
name is but a bubble on the air which a breath disperses,--and the
heir to a proud house is only remembered by the flattering
inscription on his tombstone. Forgotten Caesars, greater than any
living monarch, had mixed their bones with the soil where these two
sons of one father lay dead,--the bright moon was their sanctuary
lamp,--the stars their funeral torches,--the width of the Campagna
their bier, and the heavens their pall. And when the two terrified
witnesses of the fatal fight realised the position, and saw that
both combatants had truly perished, there were no regrets, no
lamentations, no prayers, no thought of going for assistance. With
the one selfish idea uppermost,--that of escaping immediate trouble-
-Jeanne Richaud rallied her scattered wits, and dragging the praying
and gesticulating cab-driver up from his knees, she bade him mount
his box and drive her back to the city. Tremblingly he prepared to
obey, but not without unfastening the horse which the dead Marquis
had so lately ridden, and taking some trouble to attach it to his
vehicle for his own uses.

"For if we do this, they will never know!" he muttered with
chattering teeth, "A horse is always a horse--and this is a good
animal, more valuable than the men;--and when they find the men that
is none of our business. In--in with you, Madama! I will drive you
into the city,--that is, if you give me a thousand francs instead of
the five hundred your man promised me! Otherwise I will leave you
here!"

"A thousand!" shrieked Richaud, "Oh, thief! You know I am a poor
stranger--Oh, mon Dieu! Do not murder me!" This, as the driver,
having hustled her into the vehicle and shut the door, now shook his
dirty fist at her threateningly. "Oh!--what a night of horror! Yes--
yes!--a thousand!--anything!--only take me back to Rome!"

Satisfied in his own mind that he had intimidated her sufficiently
to make her give him whatever he demanded, the driver who, despite
his native cupidity, was seriously alarmed for his own safety,
hesitated no longer, and the noise of the dashing wheels and the
galloping hoofs woke loud echoes from the road, and dull
reverberations from the Ponte Nomentano, as the equipage, with two
horses now instead of one, clattered out of sight. And then came
silence,--the awful silence of the Campagna--a silence like no other
silence in the world--brooding like darkness around the dead.

XXIV.

The next morning dawned with all the strange half mystical glow of
light and colour common to the Italian sky,--flushes of pink warmed
the gray clouds, and dazzling, opalescent lines of blue suggested
the sun without declaring it,--and Sylvie Hermenstein, who had
passed a restless and wakeful night, rose early to go on one of what
her society friends called her "eccentric" walks abroad, before the
full life of the city was up and stirring. She, who seemed by her
graceful mignonne fascinations and elegant toilettes, just a
butterfly of fashion and no more, was truly of a dreamy and poetic
nature,--she had read very deeply, and the griefs and joys of
humanity presented an ever-varying problem to her refined and
penetrative mind. She was just now interesting herself in subjects
which she had never studied so closely before,--and she was
gradually arriving at the real secret of the highest duty of life,--
that of serving and working for others without consideration for
oneself. A great love was teaching her as only a great love can;--a
love which she scarcely dared to admit to herself, but which
nevertheless was beginning to lead her step by step, into that
mysterious land, half light, half shadow, which is the nearest road
to Heaven,--a land where we suffer gladly for another's sorrow, and
are joyous in our own griefs, because another is happy! To love ONE
greatly, means to love ALL more purely,--and to find heart-room and
sympathy for the many sorrows and perplexities of those who are not
as uplifted as ourselves. For the true mission of the divine passion
in its divinest form, is that it should elevate and inspire the
soul, bringing it to the noblest issues, and for this it must be
associated with respect, as well as passion. No true soul can love
what it does not sincerely feel to be worthy of love. And Sylvie--
the brilliant little caressable Sylvie, whose warm heart had been so
long unsatisfied, was, if not yet crowned by the full benediction of
love, still gratefully aware of the wonderful colour and interest
which had suddenly come into her life with the friendship of Aubrey
Leigh. His conversation, so different to the "small talk" of the
ordinary man, not only charmed her mind, but strengthened and
tempered it,--his thoughtful and tender personal courtesy filled her
with that serenity which is always the result of perfect manner,--
his high and pure ideas of life moved her to admiration and homage,-
-and when she managed to possess herself of every book he had
written, and had read page after page, sentence after sentence, of
the glowing, fervent, passionate language, in which he denounced
shams and glorified truth,--the firmness and fearlessness with which
he condemned religious hypocrisy, and lifted pure Christianity to
the topmost pinnacle of any faith ever known or accepted in the
world, her feelings for him, while gaining fresh warmth, grew deeper
and more serious, merging into reverence as well as submission. She
had a book of his with her as a companion to her walk this very
morning, and as she entered the Pamphili woods, where she had a
special "permesso" to go whenever she chose, and trod the mossy
paths, where the morning sun struck golden shafts between the dark
ilex-boughs, as though pointing to the thousands of violets that
blossomed in the grass beneath, she opened it at a page containing
these lines:--

"Who is it that dares assert that his life or his thoughts are his
own? No man's life is his own! It is given to him in charge to use
for the benefit of others,--and if he does not so use it, it is
often taken from him when he least expects it. 'THOU FOOL, THIS
NIGHT THY LIFE SHALL BE REQUIRED OF THEE!' No man's thoughts even,
are his own. They are the radiations of the Infinite Mind of God
which pass through every living atom. The beggar may have the same
thought as the Prime Minister,--he only lacks the power of
expression. The more helpless and inept the beggar, the greater the
responsibility of the Premier. For the Premier has received
education, culture, training, and the choice of the people, and to
him is given the privilege of voicing the beggar's thought. And not
only the beggar's thought, but the thoughts of all in the nation who
have neither the skill nor the force to speak. If he does not do
what he is thus elected to do, he is but an inefficient master of
affairs. And what shall we say of the ministers of Religion who are
'ordained' to voice the Message of Christ? To echo the Divine!--to
repeat the grand Ethics of Life,--the Law of Love and Charity and
Forbearance and Pity and Forgiveness! When one of these highly
destined servants of the Great King fails in his duty,--when he
cannot pardon the sinner,--when he looks churlishly upon a child, or
condemns the innocent amusements of the young and happy,--when he
makes the sweet Sabbath a day of penance instead of praise--of
tyranny instead of rest,--when he has no charity for backsliders, no
sympathy for the sorrowful, no toleration for the contradictors of
his own particular theory--do we not feel that his very existence is
a blasphemy, and his preaching a presumption!"

Here Sylvie raised her eyes from the book. She was near an ancient
cedar-tree whose dark spreading boughs, glistening with the early
morning dew, sparkled like a jewelled canopy in the sun,--at her
feet the turf was brown and bare, but a little beyond at the turn of
the pathway, a cluster of white narcissi waved their graceful stems
to the light wind. There was a rustic bench close by, and she sat
down to rest and think. Very sweet thoughts were hers,--such
thoughts as sweet women cherish when they dream of Love. Often the
dream vanishes before realisation, but this does not make the time
of dreaming less precious or less fair. Lost in a reverie which in
its pleasantness brought a smile to her lips, she did not hear a
stealthy footstep on the grass behind her, or feel a pair of dark
eyes watching her furtively from between the cedar-boughs,--and she
started with surprise, and something of offence also, as Monsigner
Gherardi suddenly appeared and addressed her,--

"Buon giorno, Contessa!"

She rose from her seat and saluted him in silence, instinctively
grasping the book she held a little closer. But Gherardi's quick
glance had already perceived the title and the name of its author.

"You improve the time!" he said, sarcastically, pacing slowly beside
her. "To one of your faith and devotion that book should be
accursed!"

She raised her clear eyes and looked at him straightly,

"Is the sunlight accursed?" she said, "The grass or the
flowers? The thoughts in this book are as pure and beautiful
as they!"