Books: The Master Christian

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Angela turned very white. "If I consent to sell it? Sell it--to
whom?"

Sylvie put a caressing arm around her. "Your father had the news
this morning," she said, "and we all decided to tell it to you as
soon as we came back from the Consulate. A wedding-surprise on our
parts, Angela! You know the picture was on view for the first time
yesterday to some of the critics and experts in Rome?"

Angela made a faint sign of assent. Her wistful eyes were full of
wonder and anxiety.

"Well, among them was a purchaser for America--Oh, you need not look
at me, my dear!--I have nothing to do with it! You shall see the
letter your father received--and you shall decide; but the end of
the whole matter is, Angela, that if you consent, the picture will
be bought, not by any private purchaser, but by the American
nation."

"The American nation!" repeated Angela. "Are you really, really sure
of this?"

"Quite sure!" said Sylvie joyously. "And you must say good-bye to it
and let it go across the wide ocean--out to the New World all alone
with its grand and beautiful message,--unless you go with it and
show the Americans something even more perfect and beautiful in
yourself than the picture!--and you must be content to take twenty
thousand pounds for it, and be acknowledged as the greatest painter
of the age as well! This will be hard work, Angela!--but you must
resign yourself!"

She laughed for pure delight in her friend's triumph,--but Angela
turned at once to her father.

"Dearest father!" she said softly. "I am glad--for your sake!"

He folded her in his arms, too deeply moved to speak, and then as he
felt her trembling, he led her to a chair and beckoned to Cyrillon
Vergniaud who had stood apart, watching the little scene in silence.

"Come and talk to this dear girl!" he said. "She is not at all a
good hostess to-day! She ought to entertain the bride and bridegroom
here,--but it seems as if she needed to be entertained herself!" And
then, as Cyrillon obeyed him, and drew near the idol of his thoughts
with such hesitating reverence as might befit a pilgrim approaching
the shrine of a beloved saint, he turned away and was just about to
speak to the Princesse D'Agramont when a servant entered and said
hurriedly--

"Monsignor Gherardi desires to see Cardinal Bonpre!"

There was a dead pause. The group of friends looked at one another
in embarrassment. Angela rose from her chair trembling and glanced
instinctively at her picture--and for a moment no one seemed quite
certain what should be done next. The Princesse D'Agramont was the
first to recover her self-possession.

"Angela must not be here," she said. "She is not strong enough to
stand a scene. And no doubt Gherardi has come to make one! We will
leave him to you, Mr. Leigh--and to Gys Grandit!"

She withdrew at once with Angela, and in another moment Gherardi was
ushered in. He glanced quickly around him as he made his formal
salutation,--his eyes rested for a moment on Sylvie and Aubrey
Leigh--then he addressed himself to Prince Pietro.

"I am sorry to intrude upon you, Prince!" he said. "I have an urgent
matter to discuss with Cardinal Bonpre, and must see him at once."

"I regret that it is not in my power to gratify your desire,
Monsignor," said Prince Sovrani with stiff courtesy. "My brother-in-
law the Cardinal left Rome last night"

"Left Rome! Left Rome!" exclaimed Gherardi. "Who gave him permission
to leave Rome!"

"Was permission necessary?" asked Aubrey, stepping forward.

"I did not address you, sir," returned Gherardi haughtily. "I spoke
to Prince Sovrani."

"Prince Sovrani might well decline to answer you," said Aubrey
undauntedly. "Were I to make him acquainted with the fiendish plot
you have contrived against his daughter's fame and honour, he would
scarcely allow you to cross his threshold!"

Gherardi stood still, breathing quickly, but otherwise unmoved.

"Plot?" he echoed. "You must be mad! I have no plot against anyone.
My business is to uphold the cause of truth and justice, and I shall
certainly defend the name of the great artist who painted that
picture"--and he pointed to Angela's canvas--"Florian Varillo! Dead
as he is, his memory shall live!"

"Dead!" cried Prince Sovrani, springing forward. "Dead! Make me sure
of that, and I will praise God even for your lying tongue, if it
could for once speak such a welcome truth!"

Gherardi drew back amazed, instinctively recoiling from the flashing
eyes and threatening figure of the irate nobleman.

"Speak!" cried Sovrani again. "Tell me that the murderer of my
child's youth and joy is dead and gone to hell--and I will sing a
Laus Deo at St. Peter's! I will pay you a thousand pounds in masses
to keep his soul safe with the devil to whom it has gone!"

"Prince Sovrani, you are in ignorance of the facts," said Gherardi
coldly. "And you speak in an anger, which if what you suspect were
true, would be natural enough, but which under present circumstances
is greatly misplaced. The unfortunate Florian Varillo has been ill
for many days at a Trappist monastery on the Campagna. He had gone
out towards Frascati on a matter connected with some business before
starting for Naples, and as he was returning, he was suddenly met by
the news of the assassination of his betrothed wife--"

"And he knew nothing of it--" interposed Sovrani grimly. "Of course-
-he knew nothing!"

"He knew nothing--how should he know!" responded Gherardi calmly--
"The terrible shock threw him into a delirium and fever--he was
found in a dead swoon and taken into the monastery for shelter. I
saw him there only yesterday."

He paused. No one spoke.

"He was to have come to Rome to-day, and a full explanation of his
absence would have been given. But last night the monastery was set
on fire--"

"Thank God!" said Sovrani.

Gherardi looked at him with an air of admirably affected sorrowful
reproach.

"I grieve for your injustice and cruelty, Prince!" he said--"Some
natural regret there should surely be in your mind at the tragic end
of one so highly gifted--one whom you had accepted as your future
son-in-law. He met with a terrible death! The monastery was set on
fire, as I have told you--but the doors had all been previously
locked within, it is supposed by one of the monks named Ambrosio,
who was subject to fits of insanity--with the tragic result that he
and Varillo perished in the flames, there being no possibility of
rescue."

"Then the guillotine is saved unnecessary soiling," said Sovrani
fiercely. "And you, Monsignor Gherardi, should have a special
'Jubilate' sung for the world being well-rid of an exceptionally
damned and damnable villain!"

There was something terrific in the aspect of Sovrani's face and
threatening attitude, and for a moment Gherardi hesitated to go on
with his prepared sequence of lies. Rallying his forces at last with
an effort he made a very good assumption of his most authoritative
manner.

"Prince, I must ask you to be good enough to hear me patiently," he
said. "Your mind has been grossly abused, and you are not aware of
the true position of affairs. You imagine with some few gossips in
Rome, that Florian Varillo, your daughter's betrothed husband, was
guilty of the murderous attack upon her life--you are mistaken!"

"Mistaken!" Prince Pietro laughed scornfully. "Prove my mistake!--
prove it!"

"I give you my word!" said Gherardi. "And I also swear to you that
the picture yonder, which, though offensive to the Church and
blasphemous in its teaching, is nevertheless a great masterpiece of
painting, is the work of the unfortunate dead man you so greatly
wrong!"

"Liar!" And Cyrillon Vergniaud sprang forward, interposing himself
between Sovrani and the priest. "Liar!"

Gherardi turned a livid white.

"Who is this ruffian?" he demanded, drawing his tall form up more
haughtily than before. "A servant of yours?"

"Ay, a servant of his, and of all honest men!" returned Cyrillon. "I
am one whom your Church has learned to fear, but who has no fear of
you!--one whom you have heard of to your cost, and will still hear
of,--Gys Grandit!"

Gherardi glanced him up and down, and then turned from him in
disgust as from something infected by a loathly disease.

"Prince Sovrani!" he said. "I cannot condescend to converse with a
street ranter, such as this misguided person, who has most
regrettably obtained admission to your house and society! I came to
see your brother-in-law Cardinal Bonpre,--who has left Rome, you
tell me--therefore my business must be discussed with you alone. I
must ask you for a private audience."

Sovrani looked at him steadily.

"And I must refuse it, Monsignor! If in private audience you wish to
repeat the amazing falsehood you have just uttered respecting my
daughter's work--I am afraid I should hardly keep my hands off you!
Believe me you are safest in company!"

Monsignor Gherardi paused a moment,--then turned towards Sylvie.

"Contessa," he said very deliberately. "You can perhaps arrange this
matter better than I can. Florian Varillo is dead--as I have told
you; and for stating what I believe to be the truth regarding him I
have been subjected to insult in your presence. I have known you for
many years and I knew your father before you,--I have no wish to
either distress or offend you,--do you understand? I am in your
hands!"

Sylvie looked him full in the face. "My husband will answer you,
Monsignor," she said. "I am in his hands!" Gherardi turned as
crimson as he had before been pale. "Your husband!" He strode
forward with a threatening movement--then stopped short, as he
confronted Aubrey Leigh. "Your husband! So! You are married then!"--
and he laughed fiercely--"Married by the law, and excommunicated by
the Church! A pleasant position for the last of the Hermensteins!
Contessa, by your own act you have ruined the fortunes of your
friends! I would have held my peace at your will,--but now all Rome
shall know the truth!" "The truth according to the convenience of
papal Rome?" queried Aubrey Leigh--"The truth, as expounded to the
Comtesse Hermenstein in your interview with her yesterday?"

Gherardi looked him over with superb indifference.

"My interview with the Comtesse Hermenstein was a private one"--he
said,--"And if a spy was present, he must prove himself a spy. And
we of the Church do not accept a spy's testimony!"

White with indignation Aubrey sprang forward,--but Cyrillon
Vergniaud restrained him. "Patience!" he said in a low tone--"Let
him have his way for the moment--it will then be my turn!"

"My word is law in Rome!"--went on Gherardi--"Whatsoever I choose to
say will be confirmed and ratified by the greatest authority in the
world--the Pope! I am ready to swear that Florian Varillo painted
that picture,--and the Pope is ready to believe it! Who will admit
such a masterpiece to be a woman's work? No one! Each member of the
house of Sovrani can bear witness to the fact that no one ever saw
Angela Sovrani painting it! But I know the whole story--I was the
last to see Florian Varillo before his death--and he confessed the
truth--that he had worked for his betrothed wife in order to give
her the greater fame! So that he was not, and could not have been
her assassin--"

"Then her assassin must be found!" said Prince Pietro suddenly. "And
the owner of this sheath--the sheath of the dagger with which she
was stabbed--must claim his property!" And holding up the sheath in
question before Gherardi he continued--

"This _I_ found! This _I_ traced! Varillo's servant admitted it to
be his master's--Varillo's mistress recognised it as her lover's--a
slight thing, Monsignor!--but an uncomfortable witness! And if you
dare to promulgate your lie against my daughter and her work, I will
accuse you in the public courts of complicity in an attempted
murder! And I doubt whether the Pope will judge it politic, or a
part of national diplomacy, to support you then!"

For a moment Gherardi was baffled. His dark brows met in a frown of
menace and his lips tightened with his repressed fury. Then,--still
managing to speak with the utmost composure, he said,

"You will permit me to look at this dagger-sheath--this proof on
which you place so much reliance?"

In the certainty of his triumph, old Sovrani was ready to place it
in the priest's extended hand, when young Vergniaud interposed and
prevented him.

"No! You can admire it from a distance, Monsignor! You are capable
in your present humour of tearing it to atoms and so destroying
evidence! As the 'servant' of Prince Sovrani, it is my business to
defend him from this possibility!"

Gherardi raised his dark eyes and fixed them, full of bitterest
scorn, on the speaker.

"So YOU are Gys Grandit!" he said in accents which thrilled with an
intensity of hatred. "You are the busy Socialist, the self-
advertising atheist, who, like a yelping cur, barks impotently under
the wheels of Rome! You--Vergniaud's bastard--"

"Give that name to your children at Frascati!" cried Cyrillon
passionately. "And own them as yours publicly, as my father owned me
before he died!"

With a violent start, Gherardi reeled back as though he had been
dealt a sudden blow, and over his face came a terrible change, like
the grey pallor of creeping paralysis. White to the lips, he
struggled for breath . . . he essayed to speak,--then failing, made a
gesture with his hands as though pushing away some invisible foe.
Slowly his head drooped on his breast, and he shivered like a man
struck suddenly with ague. Startled and awed, everyone watched him
in fascinated silence. Presently words came slowly and with
difficulty between his dry lips.

"You have disgraced me!" he said hoarsely--"Are you satisfied?" He
took a step or two close up to the young man. "I ask you--are you
satisfied? Or--do you mean to go on--do you want to ruin me?--"
Here, moved by uncontrollable passion he threw up his hands with a
gesture of despair. "God! That it should come to this! That I should
have to ask you--you, the enemy of the Church I serve, for mercy!
Let it be enough I say!--and I--I also will be silent!"

Cyrillon looked at him straightly.

"Will you cease to persecute Cardinal Bonpre?" he demanded. "Will
you admit Varillo's murderous treachery?"

Gherardi bent his head.

"I will!" he answered slowly, "because I must! Otherwise--" He
clenched his fist and his eyes flashed fire-then he went on--"But
beware of Lorenzo Moretti! He will depose the Cardinal from office,
and separate him from that boy who has affronted the Pope. He is
even now soliciting the Holy Father to intervene and stop the
marriage of the Comtesse Sylvie Hermenstein with Aubrey Leigh,--and-
-they are married! No more--no more!--I cannot speak--let me go--let
me go--you have won your way!--I give you my promise!"

"What is your promise worth?" said Vergniaud with disdain.

"Nothing!" replied Gherardi bitterly. "Only in this one special
instance it is worth all my life!--all my position! You--even you,
the accursed Gys Grandit!--you have me in your power!"

He raised his head as he said this,--his face expressed mingled
agony and fury; but meeting Cyrillon's eyes he shrank again as if he
were suddenly whipped by a lash, and with one quick stride, reached
the door, and disappeared.

There was a moment's silence after his departure. Then Aubrey Leigh
spoke.

"My dear Grandit! You are a marvellous man! How came you to know
Gherardi's secrets?"

"Through a section of the Christian-Democratic party here"--replied
Cyrillon--"You must not forget that I, like you, have my disciples!
They keep me informed of all that goes on in Rome, and they have
watched Domenico Gherardi for years. We all know much--but we have
little chance to speak! If England knew of Rome what France knows,
what Spain knows,--what Italy knows, she would pray to be given a
second Cromwell! For the time is coming when she will need him!"

XXXVII.

A few days later the fashionable world of Europe was startled by the
announcement of two things. One was the marriage of Sylvie, Countess
Hermenstein, to the "would-be reformer of the clergy," Aubrey Leigh,
coupled with her renunciation of the Church of her fathers. There
was no time for that Church to pronounce excommunication, inasmuch
as she renounced it herself, of her own free will and choice, and
made no secret of having done so. Some of her Hungarian friends
were, or appeared to be, scandalized at this action on her part, but
the majority of them treated it with considerable leniency, and in
some cases with approval, on the ground that a wife's religion ought
to be the same as that of her husband. If love is love at all, it
surely means complete union; and one cannot imagine a perfect
marriage where there is any possibility of wrangling over different
forms of creed. The other piece of news, which created even more
sensation than the first, was the purchase of Angela Sovrani's great
picture, "The Coming of Christ," by the Americans. As soon as this
was known, the crowd of visitors to the artist's studio assumed
formidable proportions, and from early morning till late afternoon,
the people kept coming and going in hundreds, which gradually
swelled to thousands. For by-and-by the history of the picture got
about in disjointed morsels of information and gossip which soon
formed a consecutive and fairly correct narration. Experts
criticized it,--critics "explained" it--and presently nothing was
talked of in the art world but "The Coming of Christ" and the artist
who painted it, Angela Sovrani. A woman!--only a woman! It seemed
incredible--impossible! For why should a woman think? Why should a
woman dare to be a genius? It seemed very strange! How much more
natural for her to marry some decent man of established position and
be content with babies and plain needlework! Here was an abnormal
prodigy in the ways of womanhood,--a feminine creature who ventured
to give an opinion of her own on something else than dress,--who
presumed as it were, to set the world thinking hard on a particular
phase of religious history! Then, as one after the other talked and
whispered and commented, the story of Angela's own private suffering
began to eke out bit by bit,--how she had been brutally stabbed m
her own studio in front of her own picture by no other than her own
betrothed husband Florian Varillo, who was moved to his murderous
act by a sudden impulse of jealousy,--and how that same Varillo had
met with his deserts in death by fire in the Trappist monastery on
the Campagna. And the excitement over the great picture became more
and more intense--especially when it was known that it would soon be
taken away from Rome never to be seen there again. Angela herself
knew little of her rapidly extending fame,--she was in Paris with
the Princesse D'Agramont who had taken her there immediately after
Monsignor Gherardi's visit to her father. She was not told of
Florian Varillo's death till she had been some days in the French
capital, and then it was broken to her as gently as possible. But
the result was disastrous. The strength she had slowly regained
seemed now to leave her altogether, and she was stricken with a mute
despair which was terrible to witness. Hour after hour, she lay on a
couch, silent and motionless,--her large eyes fixed on vacancy, her
little white hands clasped close together as though in a very
extremity of bodily and mental anguish, and the Princesse
D'Agramont, who watched her and tended her with the utmost devotion,
was often afraid that all her care would be of no avail, and that
her patient would slip through her hands into the next world before
she had time to even attempt to save her. And Cyrillon Vergmaud,
unhappy and restless, wandered up and down outside the house, where
this life, so secretly dear to him, was poised as it were on the
verge of death, not daring to enter, or even enquire for news, lest
he should hear the worst.

One cold dark afternoon however, as he thus paced to and fro, he saw
the Princesse D'Agramont at a window beckoning him, and with a
sickening terror at his heart, he obeyed the signal.

"I wish you would come and talk to her!" said the Princesse as she
greeted him, with tears in her bright eyes. "She must be roused from
this apathy. I can do nothing with her. But I think YOU might do
much if you would!"

"I will do anything--anything in the wide world!" said Cyrillon
earnestly. "Surely you know that!"

"Yes--but you must not be too gentle with her! I do not mean that
you should be rough--God forbid!--but if you would speak to her with
authority--if you could tell her that she owes her life and her work
to the world--to God--"

She broke off, not trusting herself to say more. Cyrillon raised her
hand to his lips.

"I understand!" he said. "You know I have hesitated--because--I love
her! I cannot tell her not to grieve for her dead betrothed, when I
myself am longing to take his place!"

The Princesse smiled through her tears.

"The position is difficult I admit!" she said, with a returning
touch of playfulness--"But the very fact of your love for her should
give you the force to command her back to life. Come!"

She took him into the darkened room where Angela lay--inert,
immovable, with always the same wide-open eyes, blank with misery
and desolation, and said gently,

"Angela, will you speak to Gys Grandit?"

Angela turned her wistful looks upon him, and essayed a poor little
ghost of a smile. Very gently Cyrillon advanced and sat down beside
her,--and with equal gentleness, the Princesse D'Agramont withdrew.
Cyrillon's heart beat fast; if he could have lifted that frail
little form of a woman into his arms and kissed away the sorrow
consuming it, he would have been happy,--but his mission was that of
a friend, not lover, and his own emotions made it hard for him to
begin. At last he spoke

"When are you going to make up your mind to get well, dear friend?"

She looked at him piteously.

"Make up my mind to get well? I shall never be well again!"

"You will if you resolve to be," said Cyrillon. "It rests with you!"

She was silent.

"Have you heard the latest news from Rome?" he asked after a pause.

She made a faint sign in the negative.

Cyrillon smiled.

"The Church has with all due solemnity anathematized your picture as
an inspiration of the Evil One! But it is better that it should be
so anathematized than that it should be reported as not your own
work. Between two lies, the emissaries of the Vatican have chosen
the one least dangerous to themselves."

Angela sighed wearily.

"You do not care?" queried Cyrillon. "Neither anathema nor lie has
any effect on you?"

She raised her left hand and looked dreamily at the circlet of
rubies on it--Florian Varillo's betrothal ring.

"I care for nothing," she said slowly. "Nothing--now he is gone!"

A bitter pang shot through Cyrillon's heart. He was quite silent.
Presently she turned her eyes wistfully towards him.

"Please do not think me ungrateful for all your kindness!--but--I
cannot forget!"

"Dear Donna Sovrani, may I speak to you fully and, frankly--as a
friend? May I do so without offence?"

She looked at him and saw how pale he was, how his lips trembled,
and the consciousness that he was unhappy moved her to a faint sense
of compunction.

"Of course you may!" she answered gently. "I know you do not hate
me."

"Hate you!" Cyrillon paused, his eyes softening with a great
tenderness as they rested upon her. "Who could hate you?"

"Florian hated me," she said. "Not always,--no! He loved me once!
Only when he saw my picture, then his love perished. Ah, my Florian!
Had I known, I would have destroyed all my work rather than have
given him a moment's pain!"

"And would that have been right?" asked Cyrillon earnestly. "Would
not such an act have been one of selfishness rather than sacrifice?"

A faint color crept over her pale cheeks.

"Selfishness?--"

"Yes! Your love for him was quite a personal matter,--but your work
is a message to the world. You would have sacrificed the world for
his sake, even though he had murdered you!"

"I would!" she answered, and her eyes shone like stars as she spoke.
"The world is nothing to me; love was everything!"

"That is your way of argument," said Cyrillon. "But it is not God's
way!"

She was silent, but her looks questioned him.

"Genius like yours," he went on, "is not given to you for yourself
alone. You cannot tamper with it, or play with it, for the sake of
securing a little more temporal happiness or peace for yourself.
Genius is a crown of thorns,--not a wreath of flowers to be worn at
a feast of pleasure! You wished your life to be one of love,--God
has chosen to make it one of suffering. You say the world is nothing
to you,--then my dear friend, God insists that it shall be something
to you! Have you the right--I ask you, have you the right to turn
away from all your fellow mortals and say--'No--because I have been
disappointed in my hope and my love, then I will have nothing to do
with life--I will turn away from all who need my help--I will throw
back the gifts of God with scorn to the Giver, and do nothing simply
because I have lost what I myself specially valued!'"