Chapter 41

"In the early days of our Lord, He spoke to the wise men in the Temple, and they were 'astonished at his understanding and answers.' But they did not reprove Him,--not then,--on the contrary, they listened. How often in our own days do young children ask us questions to which we cannot reply, and which they themselves perchance could easily answer if they but knew how to clothe their thoughts with speech! For the Spirit of God is made manifest in many ways, and through many methods;--sometimes it whispers a hint or a warning to us in the petals of the rose, sometimes in the radiance of the sunset on the sea, sometimes in the simple talk of a child younger even than you are,--'Except ye become as little children--!"

He paused in his dreamy utterance, and turned in his chair listening. "What is that?" There was a noise of hurrying footsteps and murmuring voices,--that sort of half-muffled confusion in a household which bodes something wrong,--and all at once Prince Sovrani threw open the door of the Cardinal's apartments without ceremony, crying out as he entered,--

"Where is Angela?"

The Cardinal rose out of his chair, startled and alarmed.

"Angela?" he echoed, "She is not here!"

"Not here!" Prince Sovrani drew a sharp breath, and his face visibly paled,--"It is very strange! Her studio is locked at both entrances--yet the servants swear she has not passed out of the house! Besides she never goes out without leaving word as to where she has gone and when she is coming back!"

"Her studio is locked on both sides!" repeated the Cardinal, "But that is quite easy to understand--her picture is unveiled, and no one is to be permitted to see it until to-morrow."

"Yes--yes--" said the Prince Pietro impatiently, "I know all that,--but where is Angela herself? There is no sign of her anywhere! She cannot have gone out. Her maid tells me she was not dressed to go out. She was in her white working gown when last seen. Santissima Madonna!"--and old Sovrani gave a wild gesture of despair--"If any harm has happened to the child . . ."

"Harm? Why what harm could happen? What harm could happen?" said the Cardinal soothingly,--"My dear brother, do not alarm yourself needlessly--"

"Let us go to the studio," interposed Manuel suddenly--"She may not have heard you call her."

He moved in his gentle light way out of the room, and without another word they followed. Outside the studio door they paused, and Prince Sovrani tried again and again to open it, calling "Angela!" now loudly, now softly, now entreatingly, now commandingly, all to no purpose. The servants had gathered on the landing, afraid of they knew not what, and one old man, the Prince's valet, shook his head dolefully at the continued silence.

"Why not break open the door, Eccellenza?" he asked anxiously, "I know the trick of those old locks--if the Eccellenza will permit I can push back the catch with a strong chisel."

"Do so then," replied his master, "I cannot wait--there is something horrible in the atmosphere!--something that chokes me! Quick! This suspense will kill me!"

The old valet hurried away, and in two or three minutes, during which time both Prince Sovrani and the Cardinal knocked and called again outside the door quite uselessly, he returned with a strong iron chisel which he forced against the lock. For some time it resisted all efforts--then with appalling suddenness gave way and flew back, the door bursting wide open with the shock. For one instant the falling shadows of evening made the interior of the room too dim to see distinctly--there was a confused blur of objects,--the carved summit of a great easel,--a gold picture-frame shining round a wonderful mass of colouring on canvas--then gradually they discerned the outline of a small figure lying prone at the foot of the easel, stiff and motionless. With a dreadful cry of despair Sovrani dashed into the room.

"Angela! Angela!"

Falling on his knees he raised the delicate figure in his arms,--the little head drooped inanimate on his shoulder, and with the movement a coil of golden hair became unbound, and fell in soft waves over his trembling hands--the fair face was calm and tranquil--the eyes were closed,--but as the distracted man clasped that inert, beloved form closer, he saw what caused him to spring erect with a terrible oath, and cry for vengeance.

"Murdered!" he exclaimed hoarsely--"Murdered! Brother, come close!--see here! Will you talk to me of God NOW! My last comfort in life--the last gift of my Gita, murdered!"

The affrighted Cardinal tottered forward, and looking, saw that a deep stain of blood oozed over the soft white garments of the lifeless girl, and he wrung his hands in despair.

"My God! My God!" he moaned, "In what have we offended Thee that Thou shouldst visit us with such heavy affliction? Angela, my child!--my little girl!--Angela!"

The servants had by this time clustered round, a pale and terrified group, sobbing and crying loudly,--only the old valet retained sufficient presence of mind to light two or three of the lamps in the studio. As this was done, and the sudden luminance dispersed some of the darker shadows in the room, the grand picture on the easel was thrown into full prominence,--and the magnificent Christ, descending in clouds of glory, seemed to start from the painted canvas and move towards them all. And even while he wrung his hands and wept, the Cardinal's glance was suddenly caught and transfixed by this splendour,--he staggered back amazed, and murmured feebly--"Angela! THIS is her work!--this her great picture, and she--she is dead!"

Sovrani suddenly clutched him by the arm, and drew him close to the couch where he had just laid the body of his daughter down.

"Now, where was this God you serve, think you, when this happened?" he demanded, in a hoarse whisper, while his aged eyes glittered feverishly, and his stern dark face under the tossed white hair was as a frowning mask of vengeance,--"Is the world so rich in sweet women that SHE should be slain?"

Half paralysed with grief, the unhappy Cardinal sank on his knees beside the murdered girl,--taking the passive hand he kissed it, the tears flowing down his furrowed cheeks. Her magnificent picture shone forth, a living presence in the room, but the thoughts of all were for the dead only, and the distracted Sovrani saw nothing but his child's pale, set face, closed eyes, and delicate figure, lying still with the red stain of blood spreading through the whiteness of her garments. None of them thought of Manuel--and it was with a shock of surprise that the Cardinal became aware of him, and saw him approaching the couch, raising his hand as he came, warningly.

"Hush, hush!" he said, very gently, "It may be that she is not dead! She will be frightened when she wakes if she sees you weeping!"

Prince Sovrani caught the words.

"When she wakes!" he cried, "Poor boy, you do not know what you say! She will never wake! She is dead!"

But Manuel was bending closely over the couch, and looking earnestly into Angela's quiet face. Cardinal Bonpre watched him wonderingly. And the old Prince stood, arrested as it were in the very midst of his wrath and sorrow by some force more potent than even the spirit of vengeance. The sobbing servants held their breath--and all stared as if fascinated at the young boy, as after a pause, he took Angela's hand that hung so inertly down, in one of his own, and with the other felt her heart. Then he spoke.

"She is not dead!" he said simply,--"She has only swooned. Let someone fetch a physician to attend her--see!--she breathes!"

With a wild, half-smothered cry Prince Sovrani sprang forward to see for himself if this blessed news was true. He and the Cardinal both, seized with a passionate anxiety, gazed and gazed at the fair beloved face in hope, in fear and longing,--and still Manuel stood beside the couch, stroking the small hand he held with thoughtful care and tenderness. All at once a faint sigh parted the sweet lips,--the bosom heaved with a struggle for breath. Her father fell on his knees, overcome, and hiding his face in his hands sobbed aloud in the intensity of his relief and joy, while the Cardinal murmured a devout 'Thank God!' A few minutes passed, and still the fluttering uncertain breathings came and went, and still Manuel stood by the couch, quietly watchful. Presently the closed eyelids quivered and lifted,--and the beautiful true eyes shone star-like out upon the world again! She stirred, and tried to raise herself, but sank back exhausted in the effort. Then seeing the Cardinal, she smiled,--and her gaze wandered slowly to the bent, white-haired figure crouching beside her, whose whole frame was shaken by sobs.

"Father!" she murmured--"Dearest father! What is it?"

He lifted his tear-stained, agonised face, and seeing that the tender eyes regarding him were full of fear and wonder as well as love, he instantly controlled himself, and rising from his knees, kissed her gently.

"I thought you were dead, my darling!" he said softly--"Hush now--do not speak! Lie quite still! You are hurt a little,--you must rest!--you will be better,--much better presently!"

But Angela's looks had again wandered, and now they were fixed on Manuel. Over her whole face there came a sudden life and radiance.

"Manuel!" she said eagerly--"Manuel, stay with me! Do not leave me!"

Manuel smiled in answer to her appealing eyes, and came nearer.

"Do not fear!" he said--"I will stay!"

She closed her eyes again restfully, and her breathing grew lighter and easier. Just then one of the servants entered with the physician who was accustomed to attend the Sovrani household. His arrival roused Angela completely,--she became quite conscious, and evidently began to remember something of what had happened. The doctor raised her to see where she was injured, and quickly cutting away her blood-stained vesture, tenderly and carefully examined the wound.

"I cannot understand how it is that she is not dead!" he said at last--"It is a miracle! This is a stab inflicted with some sharply pointed instrument,--probably a dagger--and was no doubt intended to be mortal. As it is, it is dangerous--but there is a chance of life." Then he addressed himself to Angela, who was looking at him with wide-open eyes and a most piteous expression. "Do you know me, my child?"

"Oh, yes, doctor!" she murmured faintly.

"Do you suffer much pain?"

"No."

"Then can you tell me how this happened? Who stabbed you?"

She shuddered and sighed.

"No one!--that I can remember!"

Her eyes closed--she moved her hands about restlessly as though seeking for something she had lost.

"Manuel!"

"I am here!" answered the boy gently.

"Stay with me! I am so tired!"

Again a convulsive trembling shook her fragile body from head to foot, and again she sighed as though her heart were breaking,--then she lay passively still, though one or two tears crept down her cheeks as they carried her tenderly up to her own room and laid her down on her simple little white bed, softly curtained, and guarded by a statue of the Virgin bending over it. There, when her cruel wound was dressed and bandaged, and the physician had given her a composing draught, she fell into a deep, refreshing slumber, and only Manuel stayed beside her as she slept.

Meanwhile, down in the studio, Prince Sovrani and the Cardinal stayed together, talking softly, and gazing in fascinated wonder, bewilderment, admiration and awe at Angela's work unveiled. All the lamps in the room were now lit, and the great picture--a sublime Dream resolved into sublime Reality--shone out as much as the artificial light would permit,--a jewel of art that seemed to contain within itself all the colour and radiance of a heaven unknown, unseen yet surely near at hand. The figure and face of the approaching Saviour, instinct with life, expressed almost in positive speech the words, "Then shall ye see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory"!--and if Cardinal Bonpre had given way to the innermost emotions of his soul, he could have knelt before the exalted purity of such a conception of the Christ,--a god-like ideal, brought into realization by the exalted imagination, the holy thoughts, and the faithful patient work of a mere woman!

"This--" he said, in hushed accents--"This must be the cause of the dastardly attempt made to murder the child! Some one who knew her secret,--some one who was aware of the wonderful power and magnificence of her work,--perhaps the very man who made the frame for it,--who can tell?"

Prince Pietro meditated deeply, a frown puckering his brows,--his countenance was still pale and drawn with the stress of the mingled agony and relief he had just passed through, and the anxiety he felt concerning Angela's immediate critical condition.

"I cannot hold the position yet!--" he said, at last--"That is to say, I am too numb and stricken with fear to realize what has happened! See you! That picture is marvellous!--a wonder of the world!--it will crown my girl with all the laurels of a lasting fame,--but what matter is it to me,--this shouting of the public,--if she dies? Will it console me for her loss, to call her a Raffaelle?"

"Nay, but we must not give up hope!"--said the Cardinal soothingly--"Please God, you will not lose her! Be glad that she is not dead,--and remember that it is almost by a miracle that she lives!"

"That is true--that is true!" murmured old Sovrani, ruffling his white hair with one hand, while he still stared abstractedly at his daughter's picture--"You are very patient with me, brother!--you have all the kindness as well as all the faithfulness of your sister,--the sweetest woman the sun was ever privileged to shine on! Well, well! What did you say to me? That this picture must have been the cause of the attempted murder? Maybe,--but the poor hard-working fellow who made the frame for it, could not have done such a deed,--he has been a pensioner of Angela's for many a long day, and she has given him employment when he could not obtain it from others. Besides, he never saw the picture. Angela gave him her measurements, and when the frame was finished he brought it to her here. But he had nothing whatever to do with setting the canvas in it,--that I know, for Angela herself told me. No, no!--let us not blame the innocent; rather let us try to find the guilty."

At that moment a servant entered with a large and exquisitely arranged basket of lilies-of-the-valley, and a letter.

"For Donna Sovrani," he said, as he handed both to his master.

The Prince took the basket of lilies, and moved by a sudden fancy, set it gently in front of Angela's great work. Glancing at the superscription of the letter, he said,--

"From Varillo. I had better open it and see what he says."

He broke the seal and read the following:

"SWEETEST ANGELA,--I am summoned to Naples on business, and therefore, to my infinite regret, shall not be able to see the great picture to-morrow. You know,--you can feel how sorry I am to disappoint both you and myself in a pleasure which we have so long lovingly anticipated, but as the Queen has promised to make her visit of inspection, I dare not ask you to put off the exhibition of your work till my return. But I know I shall come back to find my Angela crowned with glory, and it will be reserved for me to add the last laurel leaf to the immortal wreath! I am grieved that I have no time to come and press my 'addio' on your sweet lips,--but in two or three days at most, I shall be again at your feet. Un bacio di

FLORIAN."

"Then he has left for Naples?" said Bonpre, to whom Prince Pietro had read this letter--"A sudden departure, is it not?"

"Very sudden!"

"He will not know what has happened to Angela--"

"Oh he will be sure to hear that!" said the Prince--"To-night it will be in all the newspapers both of Rome and Naples. Angela's light cannot be hidden under a bushel!"

"True. Then of course he will return at once."

"Naturally. If he hears the news on his way, he will probably be back to-night--" said Sovrani, but his fuzzy brows were still puckered. Some uncomfortable thought seemed to trouble him,--and presently, as if moved by a sudden inexplicable instinct, he took the basket of lilies away from where he had set it in front of his daughter's picture, and transferred it to a side-table. Cardinal Bonpre, always observant, noticed his action.

"You will not leave the flowers there?" he queried.

"No. The picture is a sacred thing!--it is an almost living Christ!--in whom Varillo does not believe!"

The Cardinal lifted his eyes protestingly.

"Yet you let the child marry him?"

Sovrani passed one hand wearily across his brows.

"Let us not talk of marriage," he said--"Death is nearer to us to-day than life! I am opposed to the match--I always have been,--and who knows--who knows what may not yet prevent it--" He paused, thinking,--then turning a solicitous glance on his brother-in-law's frail figure he said--"Felix, you look weary,--let me attend you to your own rooms, that you may rest. We need you with us,--it may be that we shall need you more than we have ever done! Pray for us, brother!--Pray for my Angela, that she may be spared--"

His harsh voice broke,--and tears trickled down his furrowed cheeks.

"See you!" he said, pointing in a kind of despair to the magnificent "Coming of Christ"--"If Raffaelle or Angelo had dared to paint this in their day, the world would be taking a lesson from it now! If it were a modern man's work, that man would be a centre for hero-worship! But that a WOMAN should create such a masterpiece!--and that woman my Angela! Do you know what it means, Felix?--what Fame always means, what it always must mean--for a woman? Just what has already happened,--the murderous dagger-thrust--the coward stab in the back--and the little child's cry of the tender broken heart we heard just now--'Stay with me!--I am so tired!'"

The Cardinal pressed his hand sympathetically, too profoundly moved himself to speak.

"This picture will bring down the thunders of the Vatican!--" went on Sovrani--"And those thunders will awaken a responsive echo from the world! But not from the Old World--the New! The New World!--yes--my Angela's work is for the living present, the coming future--not for the decayed Past!"

As he spoke, he dropped the silken curtain before the picture and hid it from view.

"We will raise it again when the painter lives--or dies!" he said brokenly.

They left the studio, Prince Pietro extinguishing the lights, and giving orders to his servant to put a strong bar across the door they had forced open,--and the Cardinal, feeling more lonely than he had done for many days, owing to the temporary absence of Manuel who was keeping watch over Angela, returned to his own apartments full of grave thoughts and anxious trouble. He had meant to leave Rome at once,--but now, such a course seemed more than impossible. Yet he knew that the scene which had, through himself indirectly, occurred at the Vatican, would have its speedy results in some decisive and vengeful action, if not on the part of the Supreme Pontiff, then through his ministers and advisers, and Bonpre was sufficiently acquainted with the secret ways of the Church he served, to be well aware of its relentlessness in all cases where its authority was called into question. The first step taken, so he instinctively felt, would be to deprive him of Manuel's companionship,--the next perhaps, to threaten him with the loss of his own diocese. He sighed heavily,--yet in his own tranquil and pious mind he could not say that he resented the position his affairs had taken. Accustomed as he was always, to submit the whole daily course of his life to the ruling of a Higher Power, he was framed and braced as temperately for adversity as for joy,--and nothing seemed to him either fortunate or disastrous except as concerned the attitude in which the soul received the announcement of God's will. To resent affliction was, in his opinion, sinful; to accept it reverently and humbly as a means of grace, and endeavour to make sweetness out of the seeming bitterness of the divine dispensation, appeared to him the only right and natural way of duty,--hence his clear simplicity of thought, his patience, plain faith, and purity of aim. And even now, perplexed and pained as he was, much more for the sorrow which had befallen his brother-in-law, than for any trouble likely to occur personally to himself, he was still able to disentangle his thoughts from all earthly cares--to lift up his heart, unsullied by complaint, to the Ruler of all destinies--and to resign himself with that Christian philosophy, which when truly practised, is so much more powerful than all the splendid stoicism of the heroic pagans, to those

"Glorious God-influences, Which we, unseeing, feel and grope for blindly, Like children in the dark, knowing that Love is near!"

Meanwhile Prince Pietro, moved by conflicting sentiments and forebodings which he was unable to explain to himself, and only strongly conscious of the desire to be avenged on his daughter's cowardly assailant, whoever it might be, muffled himself in a well-worn "Almaviva" cloak, his favourite out-door garment, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and so, looking like a fierce old brigand of the mountains, went out, not quite knowing why he went, but partly impelled by a sense of curiosity. He wanted to hear something,--to find something,--and yet he could not agree with himself as to the nature of the circumstance he sought to discover. There was a lurking suspicion in his mind to which he would not give a name,--a dark thought that made him tremble with mingled rage and horror,--but he put it away from him as a hint offered by the Evil One--an insidious suggestion as hideous as it was unnatural. The afternoon had now closed into night, and many stars were glistening bravely in the purple depths of the clear sky,--the air was mild and balmy,--and as he crossed the road to turn down the little side street leading to the Tiber, where Florian Varillo had stood but a few hours previously, a flower-girl met him with a large basket of white hyacinths and held them up to his eyes.

"Ecco la primavera, Signor!" she said, with a smile.

He shook his head, and turned abruptly away,--as he did so, his foot struck against some slight obstacle. Stooping to examine it, he saw it was the empty leathern sheath of a dagger. He picked it up, and studied it intently. It was elaborately adorned with old rococco work, and was evidently the ornamental covering of one of those small but deadly weapons which Italians, both men and women, so often wear concealed about their persons, for the purpose of taking vengeance, when deemed necessary, on an unsuspecting enemy. Slipping the thing into his pocket, the Prince looked about him, and soon recognised his bearings,--he was standing about six yards away from the private back-entrance to his daughter's studio. He walked up to the door and tried it,--it was fast locked.

"Yes--I remember!--the servants told me--both doors were locked,--and from this they said the key was gone,--" he muttered, then paused.

Presently, actuated by a sudden impulse, he turned and walked swiftly with long impatient strides through the more populated quarters of Rome towards the Corso, and he had not proceeded very far in this direction before he heard a frenzied and discordant shouting which, though he knew it did not yet bear the truth in its harsh refrain, yet staggered him and made his heart almost stand still with an agony of premonitory fear.

"Morte di Angela Sovrani!" "Assassinamento di Angela Sovrani!" "Morte subito di Angela Sovrani!" "Assassinamento crudele della bella Sovrani!"