Books: The Master Christian

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Master Christian

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"I wonder," thought the girl now, as she stepped lightly from one
corner of her studio to the other, rearranging a vase here--a bust
there--and imparting to the whole room that indefinable air of grace
and luxury which can only be bestowed by the trained hand of a
practised artist,--"I wonder if Florian will be proud? People will
certainly talk of my picture,--some will praise and some will
condemn; and this mixture of praise and condemnation is what is
called Fame. But will my beloved love me more? Will he be glad that
I am found worthy in the world's sight?--or will he think I am
usurping his place? Ah!" and she paused in her work, looking vaguely
before her with thoughtful, wondering eyes, "That is where we women
workers have to suffer! Men grudge us the laurel, but they forget
that we are trying to win it only that we may wear the rose more
fittingly! A woman tries to do a great and a noble thing, not that
she may vex of humiliate a man by superiority,--but that she may be
more worthy to be his mate and helper in the world,--and also, that
her children may reverence her for something more than the mere
animal duties of nursing and tenderness. How proud to-day would be
any man or woman who could point to Rosa Bonheur and say, 'She was
my mother!' And yet perhaps this idea of mine is too fantastic,--the
Brownings left a son--and he has nothing of their genius or their
enthusiasm."

She moved to the grand piano and set it open; as she did so a
thought of Sylvie came across her mind, and she smiled.

"Dear little rose-bud of a woman!" she mused, "How glad I am that
she is happy! And how delightful it is to see the pride she takes in
Aubrey Leigh!--how she studies his books, and pores over his
statistics and theories! I really believe she knows them all by
heart! And what wonderful schemes she is building up in her mind for
the people in whom he is so interested! What a sensation she will
make if she intends to work with her husband as thoroughly and
devotedly as her ideas imply! Her marriage will be an immense
disappointment to certain persons I could name!" and she smiled,
"Dear Sylvie! With all her goodness, and grace and beauty, her name
will sound more obnoxious at the Vatican than even the name of Gys
Grandit!"

She had lifted a cluster of lilies from a vase to regroup them, and
as her thoughts turned in this direction she bent her eyes upon
their large white blooms meditatively, and a faint rose flush warmed
her cheeks.

"Ce sont des fleurs etranges, Et traitresses, avec leurs airs de
sceptres d'anges, De thyrses lumineux pour doigts de seraphins,
Leurs parfums sont trop forts, tout ensemble, et trop fins."

"It is strange," she thought, "that I should have corresponded so
many months with 'Gys Grandit' through my admiration for his books--
and that he should turn out to be the son of poor Abbe Vergniaud!
Cyrillon! It is a pretty name! And since we met--since that terrible
scene in the church in Paris,--since he knew who I was, he has not
written. And, and for his poor father's death . . . I suppose he
thought it was sufficient to telegraph the news of the death to my
uncle. But I am sorry he does not write to me any more!--I valued
his letters--they were such brilliant essays on all the movements
and politics of the time. It was just a little secret of mine;--it
was pleasant to think I was in correspondence with such a genius.
However, he has had so much to think of since then . . ." She set the
lilies in their vase again, inhaling their delicious odour as she
did so.

"The flowers of the saints and martyrs!" she said, "I do not wonder
that the artists chose them for that purpose; they are so white-and
pure-and passionless . . ."

A slight crash disturbed her self-communion, and she hastened to see
what had fallen. It was a small clay figure of "Eros",--a copy of a
statuette found in the ruins of Pompeii. The nail supporting its
bracket had given way. Angela had been rather fond of this little
work of art, and as she knelt to pick up the fragments she was more
vexed at the accident than she cared to own. She looked wistfully at
the pretty moulded broken limbs of the little god as she put them
all in a heap together.

"What a pity!" she murmured, "I am not at all superstitious, yet I
wish anything in the room had come to grief rather than this! It is
not a good omen!"

She moved across the floor again and stood for a moment inert, one
hand resting lightly on the amber silk draperies which veiled her
picture.

"There was no truth at all in that rumour about Florian's
'Phillida';--'Pon-Pon,' as they call her," she thought, "She serves
as a model to half the artists in Rome. Unfortunate creature. She is
one of the most depraved and reckless of her class, so I hear--and
Florian is far too refined and fastidious to even recognise such a
woman, outside his studio. The Marquis Fontenelle only wished to
defend himself by trying to include another man in the charge of
libertinage, when he himself was meditating the most perfidious
designs on Sylvie. Poor Fontenelle! One must try and think as kindly
as possible of him now--he is dead. But I cannot think it was right
of him to accuse my Florian!"

Just then she heard a soft knocking. It came from the door at the
furthest end of the studio, one which communicated with a small
stone courtyard, which in its turn opened out to a narrow street
leading down to the Tiber. It was the entrance at which models
presented themselves whenever Angela needed them.

"Angela!" called a melodious voice, which she recognised at once as
the dearest to her in the world. "Angela!"

She hurried to the door but did not open it.

"Florian!" she said softly, putting her lips close to the panel,
"Florian, caro mio! Why are you here?"

"I want to come in," said Florian, "I have news, Angela! I must see
you!"

She hesitated a moment longer, and then she undid the bolt, and
admitted him. He entered with a smiling and victorious air.

"I am all alone here," she said at once, before he could speak,
"Father is at Frascati on some business--and my uncle the Cardinal
is at the Vatican. Will you not come back later?"

For all answer, Florian took her in his arms with quite a reverent
tenderness, and kissed her softly on brow and lips.

"No, I will stay!" he said, "I want to have you all to myself for a
few minutes. I came to tell you, sweetest, that if I am to be the
first to see your picture and pass judgment on it, I had better see
it now, for I am going away to-morrow!"

"Going away!" echoed Angela, "Where?"

"To Naples," he answered, "Only for a little while. They have
purchased my picture 'Phillida et les Roses' for one of the museums
there, and they want me to see if I approve of the position in which
it is to be placed. They also wish to honour me by a banquet or
something of the kind--an absurdly unnecessary affair, but still I
think it is perhaps advisable that I should go."

He spoke with an affectation of indifference, but any observer of
him whose eyes were not blinded by affection, could have seen that
he exhaled from himself an atmosphere of self-congratulation at the
banquet proposition. Little honours impress little minds;--and a
faint thrill of pain moved Angela as she saw him thus delighted with
so poor and ordinary a compliment. In any other man it would have
moved her to contempt, but in Florian--well!--she was only just a
little sorry.

"Yes, perhaps it might look churlish of you not to accept," she
said, putting away from her the insidious suggestion that perhaps if
Florian loved her as much as he professed, an invitation to a
banquet at Naples would have had no attraction for him as compared
with being present at the first view of her picture on the morning
she had herself appointed--"I think under the circumstances you had
better not see the picture till you come back!"

"Now, Angela!" he exclaimed vexedly, "You know I will not consent to
that! You have promised me that I shall be the first to see it--and
here I am!"

"It should be seen by the morning light," said Angela, a touch of
nervousness beginning to affect her equanimity,--"This light is pale
and waning, though the afternoon is so clear. You cannot see the
coloring to the best advantage!"

"Am I not a painter also?" asked Varillo playfully, putting his arm
round her waist,--"And can I not guess the effect in the morning
light as well as if I saw it? Come, Angela mia! Unveil the great
prodigy!" and he laughed,--"You began it before we were affianced;--
think what patience I have had for nearly two years!"

Angela did not reply at once. Somehow, his light laugh jarred upon
her.

"Florian," she said at last, raising her truthful, beautiful eyes
fully to his, "I do not think you quite understand! This picture has
absorbed a great deal of my heart and soul--I have as it were,
painted my own life blood into it--for I mean it to declare a truth
and convey a lesson. It will either cover me with obloquy, or crown
me with lasting fame. You speak jestingly, as if it were some toy
with which I had amused myself these three years. Do you not believe
that a woman's work may be as serious, as earnest, and strongly
purposeful as a man's?"

Still clasping her round the waist, Florian drew her closer, and
pressing her head against his breast, he looked down on her smiling.

"What sweet eyes you have!" he said, "The sweetest, the most
trusting, the most childlike eyes I have ever seen! It would be
impossible to paint such eyes, unless one's brushes were
Raffaelle's, dipped in holy water. Not that I believe very much in
holy water as a painter's medium! "He laughed,--he had a well-shaped
mouth and was fond of smiling, in order that he might show his even
pearly teeth, which contrasted becomingly with his dark moustache.
"Yes, my Angela has beautiful eyes,--and such soft, pretty hair!"
and he caressed it gently, "like little golden tendrils with a beam
of the sunlight caught in it! Is not that a pretty compliment? I
think I ought to have been a poet instead of a painter!"

"You are both," said Angela fondly, with a little sigh of rest and
pleasure as she nestled in his arms--"You will be the greatest
artist of your time when you paint large subjects instead of small
ones."

His tender hold of her relaxed a little.

"You think 'Phillida et les Roses' a small subject?" he asked, with
a touch of petulance in his tone, "Surely if a small study is
perfect, it is better than a large one which is imperfect?"

"Of course it is!" replied the girl quickly--"By smallness I did not
mean the size of the canvas,--I meant the character of the subject."

"There is nothing small in the beauty of woman!" declared Varillo,
with an enthusiastic air--"Her form is divine! Her delicious flesh
tints--her delicate curves--her amorous dimples--her exquisite
seductiveness--combined with her touching weakness--these qualities
make of woman the one,--the only subject for a painter's brush, when
the painter is a man!"

Involuntarily Angela thought of "Pon-Pon," who had posed for the
"Phillida," and a little shiver ran over her nerves like a sudden
wind playing on the chords of an AEolian harp. Gently she withdrew
herself from her lover's embrace.

"And when the painter is a woman, should the only subject for her
brush be the physical beauty of man?" she asked.

Varillo gave an airy gesture of remonstrance.

"Carissima mia! You shock me! How can you suggest such a thing! The
two sexes differ in tastes and aspirations as absolutely as in form.
Man is an unfettered creature,--he must have his liberty, even if it
reaches license; woman is his dependent. That is Nature's law. Man
is the conqueror--woman is his conquest! We cannot alter these
things. That is one reason for the prejudice existing against
woman's work--if it excels that of man, we consider it a kind of
morbid growth--an unnatural protuberance on the face of the
universe. In fact, it is a wrong balance of the intellectual forces,
which in their action, should always remain on the side of man."

"But if man abuses his power, may it not be taken from him
altogether?" suggested Angela tranquilly, "If man, knowing that a
life of self-indulgence destroys his intellectual capacity, still
persists in that career, and woman, studying patiently to perfect
herself, refuses to follow his example of vice, may it not happen
that the intellectual forces may range themselves on the side of
right rather than wrong, and invest woman with a certain supremacy
in the end? It is a problem worth thinking of!"

Varillo looked sharply at her. Had she heard anything of his private
life in Rome?--a life he kept carefully concealed from everyone who
might be likely to report his little amusements at the Palazzo
Sovrani? A slight, very slight touch of shame pricked him, as he
noted the grace of her figure, the dainty poise of her head on her
slim white throat--the almost royal air of dignity and sweetness
which seemed to surround her,--there was no doubt whatever of her
superiority to the women he generally consorted with, and for a
moment he felt remorseful,--but he soon dismissed his brief
compunction with a laugh.

"No, sweet Angela," he said gaily, "it is not worth thinking of!
Believe me! I will not enter into any such profound discussions with
you. My present time is too short, and your attractions too many!
Why did you slip out of my arms so unkindly just now? Surely you
were not offended? Comeback! Come, and we will go up to the great
picture as lovers should, together--entwined in each other's arms!--
and you shall then draw the mysterious curtain,--or shall I?"

She still hesitated. Then after a pause, she came towards him once
more, the soft colour alternately flushing and paling her cheeks, as
she laid her hand on his arm.

"You did not answer me," she said, "when I asked you just now if you
believed that a woman's work could be as purposeful as a man's--
sometimes indeed more so. You evaded the question. Why?"

"Did I evade it?" and Varillo took her hand in his own and kissed
it,--"Dolcesza mia, I would not pain you for the world!"

A slight shadow clouded her face.

"You will not pain me," she answered, "except by not being true to
yourself and to me. You know how I have worked,--you know how high I
have set my ambition for your sake--to make myself more worthy of
you; but if you do honestly think that a woman's work in art must
always be inferior to a man's, no matter how ardently she studies--
no matter even if she has so perfected herself in drawing, anatomy,
and colouring as to be admitted the equal of men in these studies--
if the result must, in your mind, be nevertheless beneath that of
the masculine attainment, why say so,--because then--then--"

"Then what, my sweet philosopher?" asked Florian lightly, again
kissing the hand he held.

She fixed her eyes fully on him. "Then," she replied slowly, "I
should know you better--I should understand you more!"

An unpleasant twinge affected his nerves, and his eyelids quivered
and blinked as though struck by a sudden shaft of the sun. This was
the only facial sign he ever gave of the difficulty he at times
experienced in meeting the straight, clear glance of his betrothed.

"You would know me more, and love me less? Is that it?" he said
carelessly. "My dear girl, why do you press the point? If you will
have it, I tell you frankly, I think women are growing very clever,
much too clever in fact,--and that the encouragement and impetus
given to them in the Arts is a very great mistake. Because they are
not all geniuses like my Angela! You are one in a thousand--or
rather one in a million,--and for one Angela Sovrani we shall have a
world of female daubers calling themselves artists and entering into
competition with us, as if we had not already quite enough
competition among our own sex! I honestly believe that with very
rare exceptions woman's work is decidedly inferior and mediocre as
compared to man's."

Quickly Angela disengaged herself from his hold, her lips trembling-
-her eyes were full of a strange fire and brilliancy,--her slight
figure seemed to grow taller as she stood for a moment like a queen,
regarding him steadfastly from under her fair, level brows.

"Then come and see!" she said, "I am not proud--I make no boast at
all of what I have done--and no one perceives or deplores the faults
of my work more than I do--but I know I have not altogether failed!"

She moved away from him and stood opposite her veiled canvas,--then
as Florian followed and joined her, with a swift action which had
something of defiance as well as grace in it, she swept aside the
concealing curtain. Florian recoiled with an involuntary cry,--and
then remained motionless and silent,--stricken dumb and stupid by
the magnificent creation which confronted him. This Angela's
masterpiece! A woman's work! This stupendous conception! This
perfect drawing! This wondrous colouring! Fully facing him, the
central glory of the whole picture, was a figure of Christ--unlike
any other Christ ever imagined by poet or painter--an etherealised
Form through which the very light of Heaven itself seemed to shine,-
-supreme, majestic, and austerely God-like;--the face was more
beautiful than any ever dreamed of by the hewers of the classic
marbles--it was the face of a great Archangel,--beardless and
youthful, yet kingly and commanding. Round the broad brows a Crown
of Thorns shone like a diadem, every prickly point tipped with pale
fire,--and from the light floating folds of intense white which,
cloud-like, clung about the divine Form, faint flashes of the
lightning gleamed. Above this grand Christ, the heavens were opened,
pouring out a rain of such translucent purity of colour and radiance
as never had been seen in any painted canvas before--but beneath,
the clouds were black as midnight--confused, chaotic, and drifting
darkly on a strong wind as it seemed into weird and witch-like
shapes, wherein there were seen the sun and moon revolving pallidly,
like globes of fire lost from their orbits and about to become
extinct. And among those shifting black films were a crowd of human
creatures, floating and falling into unknown depths of darkness, and
striking out wild arms of appeal and entreaty and despair,--the
faces of these were all familiar, and were the life-like portraits
of many of those pre-eminent in the history of the time. Chief
among them was the Sovereign Pontiff, waxen and wan and dark-eyed,--
he was depicted as fastening fetters of iron round the body of a
beautiful youth, laurel-crowned, the leaves of the laurel bearing
faint gold letters which spelt the word "Science." Huddled beside
him was a well-known leader of the Jesuits, busily counting up heaps
of gold,--another remarkable figure was that of a well-known magnate
of the Church of England, who, leaning forward eagerly, sought to
grasp and hold the garment of the Pope, but was dragged back by the
hand of a woman crowned with an Imperial diadem. After these and
other principal personages came a confusion of faces--all
recognisable, yet needing study to discern;--creatures drifting
downwardly into the darkness,--one was the vivisectionist whose name
was celebrated through France, clutching at his bleeding victim and
borne relentlessly onwards by the whirlwind,--and forms and faces
belong to men of every description of Church-doctrine were seen
trampling underneath them other human creatures scarcely
discernible. And over all this blackness and chaos the supernal
figure of the Christ was aerially poised,--one hand was extended and
to this a woman clung--a woman with a beautiful face made piteous in
its beauty by long grief and patient endurance. In her other arm she
held a sleeping child--and mother and child were linked together by
a garland of flowers partially broken and faded. Her entreating
attitude,--the sleeping child's helplessness--her worn face,--the
perishing roses of earth's hope and joy,--all expressed their
meaning simply yet tragically, and as the Divine Hand supported and
drew her up out of the universal chaos below, the hope of a new
world, a better world, a wiser world, a holier world, seemed to be
distantly conveyed. But the eyes of the Christ were full of
reproach, and were bent on the Representative of St. Peter binding
the laurel-crowned youth, and dragging him into darkness,--and the
words written across the golden mount of the picture, in clear black
letters, seemed to be actually spoken aloud from the vivid color and
movement of the painting. "Many in that day will call upon Me and
say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name
cast out devils, and done many wonderful works?"

"Then will I say to them, I never knew you! Depart from me all ye
that work iniquity!"

As an Allegory the picture was a daring yet sublime reproach to the
hypocrisy of the religious world,--as a picture it was consummate in
every detail, and would have been freely admitted as a masterpiece
of Raffaelle had Raffaelle been fortunate enough to paint it. Still
Varillo kept silence. Angela's heart beat so loudly that she could
almost hear it in the deep silence of the room. Every fine little
nerve in her body was strained--to the utmost height of suspense,--
she was afraid to look at her lover, or disturb the poise of his
mental judgment by the lightest movement. And he? Thoughts, black as
the chaos of cloud she had so powerfully portrayed, were stirring in
his soul,--thoughts, base and mean and cowardly, which, gradually
gathering force as he dwelt upon them, began to grow and spring up
to a devilish height worked into life and being by a burning spark
of jealousy, which, long smouldering in his nature, now leaped into
a flame. No trace of the wicked inner workings of his mind, however,
darkened the equanimity of his features, or clouded the serene, soft
candour of his eyes, as he at last turned towards the loving,
shrinking woman, who stood waiting for his approval, as simply and
sweetly as a rose might wait for the touch of the morning sun.
Slowly, and like little pellets of ice, his first words fell from
his lips,

"Did you do it all yourself?"

The spell was disturbed--the charm broken. Angela turned very white-
-she drew a deep breath--and the tension on her nerves relaxed,--her
heart gave one indignant bound--and then resumed its usual quiet
beating, as with a strong effort she gathered all her dignity and
force together, and replied simply,

"Can you ask?"

He looked at her. What an embodied insult to the arrogance of man
she was! She!--a mere woman!--and the painter of the finest picture
ever seen since Raffaelle and Michael Angelo left the world to work
elsewhere. "Chaste as ice, pure as snow, thou shalt not escape
calumny!" In his imagination he saw the world crowning her with
imperishable bays--he heard the denunciation of the Vatican and the
condemnation of the Churches, thunder uselessly against the grand
lesson of her work, while crowds gathered adoringly before the most
perfect Christ ever painted!--and he saw her name written up in
letters of gold on the scroll of those whom history numbers as
immortal! It should not be! It should never be! And again he spoke,
enunciating his words with difficulty, for his lips were dry.

"It is very fine! Quite marvellous, in fact!--almost unprecedented!
That is why I ask, 'did you do it all yourself?' You must not be
offended, Angela! I mean so well! You see the conception--the
breadth of treatment--the gradation and tone of colour--are all
absolutely masculine. Who first suggested the idea to you?"

Still very pale, breathing quickly yet lightly, and maintaining an
air of calm which was almost matter of fact, she answered,--

"No one! Though perhaps, if it is traced to its source, it arose in
my mind from seeing the universal dissatisfaction which most
intelligent people feel with religion, as administered to them by
the Churches. That, and a constant close study of the New Testament,
set the thought in my brain,--a thought which gradually expressed
itself in this form. So far as any work belongs to the worker, it is
entirely my own creation. I am sorry you should have implied any
doubt of it!"

Here her voice trembled a little, but she quickly steadied it. He
smiled--a little difficult smile--and slipping his right hand
between his coat and vest, felt for something he always carried
there. It should never be!

"My dear Angela!" he said, with a gracious tranquillity that was
almost dignity, "I do not doubt you in the least!--I merely SUGGEST
what all the world will SAY! There is not an art-critic alive who
will accept this--this extraordinary production--as the work of a
woman! It is the kind of thing which might have been produced
hundreds of years ago by a great master setting his pupils to work
at different sections of the canvas,--but that one woman, painting
all alone for three years, should have designed and executed such a
masterpiece--yes!--I will admit it is a masterpiece!--is an unheard
of and altogether an extraordinary thing, and you must not wonder if
competent judges reject the statement with incredulity!"