Chapter 48
"I was here from the first!" he replied triumphantly. "I followed on Gherardi's very heels. Your Arab boy admitted me--he was in my secret. He showed me into the anteroom just outside, where by leaving a corner of the door ajar I could see and hear everything. And I listened to your every word! I saw every bright flash of the strong soul in your brave eyes! And now those eyes question me, sweetheart,--almost reproachfully they seem to ask me why I did not interfere between you and Gherardi before? Ah, but you must forgive me for the delay! I wanted to drink all my cup of nectar to the dregs--I could not lose one drop of such sweetness! To see you, slight fragile blossom of a woman, matching your truth and courage against the treachery and malice of the most unscrupulous priestly tool ever employed by the Vatican, was a sight to make me strong for all my days!" He kissed her passionately. "My love! My wife! How can I ever thank you!"
She raised her sweet eyes wonderingly.
"Did you doubt me, Aubrey?" "No! I never doubted you. But I wondered whether your force would hold out, whether you might not be intimidated, whether you might not temporize, which would have been natural enough--whether you might not have used some little social art or grace to cover up and disguise the absoluteness of your resolve--but no! You were a heroine in the fight, and you gave your blows straight from the hilt, without flinching. You have made me twice a man, Sylvie! With you beside me I shall win all I might otherwise have lost, and I thank God for you, dear!--I thank God for you!"
He drew her close again into his arms, pressing her to his heart which beat tumultously with its deep rejoicing,--no fear now that they two would ever cease to be one! No danger now of those miserable so-called "religious" disputes between husband and wife, which are so eminently anti-Christian, and which make many a home a hell upon earth,--disputes which young children sometimes have to witness from their earliest years, when the mother talks "at" the father for not going to Church, or the father sneers at the mother for being "a rank Papist"! Nothing now, but absolute union in spirit and thought, in soul and intention--the rarest union that can be consummated between man and woman, and yet the only one that can engender perfect peace and unchanging happiness.
And presently the lovers' trance of joy gave way to thought for others; to a realization of the dangers hovering over the good Cardinal, and the already ill-fated Angela Sovrani, and Aubrey, raising the golden head that nestled against his breast, kissed the sweet lips once more and said--
"Now, my Sylvie, we must take the law into our own hands! We must do all we can to save our friends. The Cardinal must be thought of first. If we are not quick to the rescue he will be sent 'into retreat,' which can be translated as forced detention, otherwise imprisonment. He must leave Rome to-night. Now listen!"
And sitting down beside her, still holding her hand, he gave her an account of his meeting with Cyrillon Vergniaud, otherwise "Gys Grandit," and told her of the sudden passion for Angela that had fired the soul of that fiery writer of the fiercest polemics against priestcraft that had as yet startled France.
"Knowing now all the intended machinations of Gherardi," continued Aubrey, "what I suggest is this,--that you, my Sylvie, should confide in the Princesse D'Agramont, who is fortunately for us, an enemy of the Vatican. Arrange with her that she persuades Angela to return under her escort at once to Paris. Angela is well enough to travel if great care be taken of her, and the Princesse will not spare that. Cyrillon can go with them--I should think that might be managed?"
He smiled as he put this question. Sylvie smiled in answer and replied demurely--
"I should think so!"
"But the Cardinal," resumed Aubrey, "and--and Manuel--must go to-night. I will see Prince Sovrani and arrange it. And Sylvie--will you marry me to-morrow morning?"
Her eyes opened wide and she laughed.
"Why yes, if you wish it!" she said. "But--so soon?"
"Darling, the sooner the better! I mean to take every possible method of making our marriage binding in the sight of the world, before the Vatican has time to launch its thunders. If you are willing, we can be married at the American Consulate to-morrow morning. You must remember that though born of British parents, I do not resign my American citizenship, and would not forego being of the New World for all the old worlds ever made! The American Consul knows me well, and he will begin to make things legal for us to-morrow if you are ready."
"BEGIN to make things legal?" echoed Sylvie smiling. "Will he do no more than begin?"
"My sweetheart, he cannot. He will make you mine according to American law. In England, you will again be made mine according to English law. And then afterwards we will have our religious ceremony!"
Sylvie looked at him perplexedly, then gave a pretty gesture of playful resignation.
"Let everything be as you wish and decide, Aubrey," she said." I give my life and love to you, and have no other will but yours!"
He kissed her.
"I accept the submission, only to put myself more thoroughly at your command," he said tenderly,--"You are my queen,--but with powerful enemies against us, I must see that you are rightfully enthroned!"
A few minutes' more conversation,--then a hurried consultation with Madame Bozier, and Sylvie, changing her lace gown for a simple travelling dress, walked out of the Casa D'Angeli with the faithful Katrine, and taking the first carriage she could find, was driven to the Palazzo where the Princesse D'Agramont had her apartments. Allowing from ten to fifteen minutes to elapse after her departure, Aubrey Leigh himself went out, and standing on the steps of the house, looked up and down carelessly, drawing on his gloves and humming a tune. His quick glance soon espied what he had been almost certain he should see, namely, the straight black-garmented figure of a priest, walking slowly along the street on the opposite side, his hands clasped behind his back, and his whole aspect indicative of devout meditation.
"I thought so!" said Aubrey to himself. "A spy set on already! No time to lose--Cardinal Bonpre must leave Rome at nightfall."
Leisurely he crossed the road, and walking with as slow a step as the priest he had noticed, came opposite to him face to face. With impenetrable solemnity the holy man meekly moved aside,--with equally impenetrable coolness, Aubrey eyed him up and down, then the two passed each other, and Aubrey walked with the same unhasting pace, to the end of the street,--then turned--to see that the priest had paused in his holy musings to crane his neck after him and watch him with the most eager scrutiny. He did not therefore take a carriage at the moment he intended, but walked on into the Corso,--there he sprang into a fiacre and drove straight to the Sovrani Palace. The first figure he saw there, strolling about in the front of the building, was another priest, absorbed in apparently profound thoughts on the sublimity of the sunset, which was just then casting its red glow over the Eternal City. And with the appearance of this second emissary of the Vatican police, he realised the full significance of the existing position of affairs.
Without a moment's loss of time he was ushered into the presence of the Cardinal, and there for a moment stood silent on the threshold of the apartment, overcome by the noble aspect of the venerable prelate, who, seated in his great oaken chair, was listening to a part of the Gospel of Saint Luke, read aloud in clear sweet accents by Manuel.
"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
"And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?
"Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like:
"He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.
"But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; AND THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE WAS GREAT."
And emphasizing the last line, Manuel closed the book; then at a kindly beckoning gesture from the Cardinal, Aubrey advanced into the room, bowing with deep reverence and honour over the worn old hand the prelate extended.
"My lord Cardinal," he said without further preface, "you must leave Rome to-night!"
The Cardinal raised his gentle blue eyes in wondering protest.
"By whose order?"
"Surely by your own Master's will," said Aubrey with deep earnestness. "For he would not have you be a victim to treachery!"
"Treachery!" And the Cardinal smiled. "My son, traitors harm themselves more than those they would betray. Treachery cannot touch me!"
Aubrey came a step nearer.
"Monsignor, if you do not care for yourself you will care for the boy," he said in a lower tone, with a glance at Manuel, who had withdrawn, and was now standing at one of the windows, the light of the sunset appearing to brighten itself in his fair hair. "He will be separated from you!"
At this the Cardinal rose up, his whole form instinct with resolution and dignity.
"They cannot separate us against the boy's will or mine," he said. "Manuel!"
Manuel came to his call, and the Cardinal placed one hand on his shoulder.
"Child," he said softly, "they threaten to part me from you, if we stay longer here. Therefore we must leave Rome!"
Manuel looked up with a bright flashing glance of tenderness.
"Yes, dear friend, we must leave Rome!" he said. "Rome is no place for you--or for me!"
There was a moment's silence. Something in the attitude of the old man and the young boy standing side by side, moved Aubrey deeply; a sense of awe as well as love overwhelmed him at the sight of these two beings, so pure in mind, so gentle of heart, and so widely removed in years and in life,--the one a priest of the Church, the other a waif of the streets, yet drawn together as it seemed, by the simple spirit of Christ's teaching, in an almost supernatural bond of union. Recovering himself presently he said,
"To-night then, Monsignor?"
The Cardinal looked at Manuel, who answered for him.
"Yes, to-night! We will be ready! For the days are close upon the time when the birth of Christ was announced to a world that does not yet believe in Him! It will be well to leave Rome before then! For the riches of the Pope's palace have nothing to do with the poor babe born in a manger,--and the curse of the Vatican would be a discord in the angels' singing--'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN'!"
His young voice rang out, silver clear and sweet, and Aubrey gazed at him in wondering silence.
"To-night!" repeated Manuel, smiling and stretching out his hand with a gentle authoritative gesture. "To-night the Cardinal will leave Rome, and _I_ will leave it too--perchance for ever!"
XXXV.
During these various changes in the lives of those with whom he had been more or less connected, Florian Varillo lay between life and death in the shelter of a Trappist monastery on the Campagna. When he had been seized by the delirium and fever which had flung him, first convulsed and quivering, and then totally insensible, at the foot of the grim, world-forgotten men who passed the midnight hours in digging their own graves, he had been judged by them as dying or dead, and had been carried into a sort of mortuary chapel, cold and bare, and lit only by the silver moonbeams and the flicker of a torch one of the monks carried. Waking in this ghastly place, too weak to struggle, he fell a-moaning like a tortured child, and was, on showing this sign of life, straight-way removed to one of the cells. Here, after hours of horrible suffering, of visions more hideous than Dante's Hell, of stupors and struggles, of fits of strong shrieking, followed by weak tears, he woke one afternoon calm and coherent,--to find himself lying on a straight pallet bed in a narrow stone chamber, dimly lighted by a small slit of window, through which a beam of the sun fell aslant, illumining the blood-stained features of a ghastly Christ stretched on a black crucifix directly opposite him. He shuddered as he saw this, and half-closed his eyes with a deep sigh.
"Tired--tired!" said a thin clear voice beside him. "Always tired! It is only God who is never weary!"
Varillo opened his eyes again languidly, and turned them on a monk sitting beside him,--a monk whose face was neither old nor young, but which presented a singular combination of both qualities. His high forehead, white as marble, had no furrows to mar its smoothness, and from under deep brows a pair of wondering wistful brown eyes peered like the eyes of a lost and starving child. The cheeks were gaunt and livid, the flesh hanging in loose hollows from the high and prominent bones, yet the mouth was that of a youth, firm, well-outlined and sweet in expression, and when he smiled as he did now, he showed an even row of small pearly teeth which might have been envied by many a fair woman.
"Only God who is never weary!" he said, nodding his head slowly, "but we--you and I--we are soon tired!"
Varillo looked at him dubiously; and a moment's thought decided him to assume a certain amount of meekness and docility with this evident brother of some religious order, so that he might obtain both sympathy and confidence from him, and from all whom he might be bound to serve. Ill and weak as he was, the natural tendency of his brain to scheme for his own advantage, was not as yet impaired.
"Ah, yes!" he sighed, "I am very tired!--very ill! I do not know what has happened to me--nor even where I am. What place is this?"
"It is a place where the dead come!" responded the monk. "The dead in heart! the dead in soul--the dead in sin! They come to bury themselves, lest God should find them and crush them into dust before they have time to say a prayer! Like Adam and his wife, they hide themselves 'from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.'"
Varillo raised himself on one elbow, and stared at the pale face and smiling mouth of the speaker in fear and wonder.
"'A place where the dead come!'" he echoed. "But you are alive--and so am I!"
"You may be--I am not," said the monk quietly. "I died long ago! People who are alive say we are men, though we know ourselves to be ghosts merely. This place is called by the world a Trappist monastery,--you will go out of it if indeed you are alive--you must prove that first! But we shall never come out, because we are dead. One never comes out of the grave!"
With an effort Varillo tried to control the tremor of his nerves, and to understand and reason out these enigmatical sentences of his companion. He began to think--and then to remember,--and by and by was able to conjure up the picture of himself as he had last been conscious of existence,--himself standing outside the gates of a great building on the Campagna, and shaking the iron bars to and fro. It was a Trappist monastery then?--and he was being taken charge of by the Trappist Order? This fact might possibly be turned to his account if he were careful. He lay down once more on his pillow and closed his eyes, and under this pretence of sleep, pondered his position. What were they saying of him in Rome? Was Angela buried? And her great picture? What had become of it?
"How long have I been here?" he asked suddenly.
The monk gave a curious deprecatory gesture with his hands.
"Since you died! So long have you been dead!"
Varillo surveyed him with a touch of scorn.
"You talk in parables--like your Master!" he said with a feeble attempt at a laugh. "I am not strong enough to understand you! And if you are a Trappist monk, why do you talk at all? I thought one of your rules was perpetual silence?"
"Silence? Yes--everyone is silent but me!" said the monk--"I may talk--because I am only Ambrosio,--mad Ambrosio!--something wrong here!" And he touched his forehead. "A little teasing demon lives always behind my eyes, piercing my brain with darts of fire. And he obliges me to talk; he makes me say things I should not--and for all the mischief he works upon me I wear this--see!"--And springing up suddenly he threw aside the folds of his garment, and displayed his bare chest, over which a coarse rope was crossed and knotted so tightly, that the blood was oozing from the broken flesh on either side of it. "For every word I say, I bleed!"
Varillo gave a nervous cry and covered his eyes.
"Do not be afraid!" said Ambrosio, drawing his robe together again, "It is only flesh--not spirit--that is wounded! Flesh is our great snare,--it persuades us to eat, to sleep, to laugh, to love--the spirit commands none of these things. The spirit is of God--it wants neither food nor rest,--it is pure and calm,--it would escape to Heaven if the flesh did not cramp its wings!"
Varillo took his hand from his eyes and tossed himself back on his pillow with a petulant moan.
"Can they do nothing better for me than this?" he ejaculated. "To place me here in this wretched cell alone with a madman!"
Ambrosio stood by the pallet bed looking down upon him with a sort of child-like curiosity.
"No better than this?" he echoed. "Would you have anything better? Safe--safe from the world,--no one can find you or follow you--no one can discover your sin--"
"Sin! What sin!" demanded Varillo fiercely. "You talk like a fool--as you own yourself to be! I have committed no sin!"
"Good--good!" said Ambrosio. "Then you must be canonized with all the rest of the saints! And St. Peter's shall be illuminated, and the Pope shall be carried in to see you and to lay his hands upon you, and they shall shout to him, 'Tu es Petrus!' and no one will remember what kind of a bruised, bleeding, tortured, broken-down Head of the Church stood before the multitude when Pilate cried 'Ecce homo!'"
Varillo stared at him in unwilling fascination. He seemed carried beyond himself,--it was as though some other force spoke through him, and though he scarcely raised his voice, its tone was so clear, musical, and penetrative that it seemed to give light and warmth to the cold dullness of the cell.
"You must not mind me!" he went on softly, "My thoughts have all gone wrong, they tell me,--so have my words. I was young once--and in that time I used to study hard and try to understand what it was that God wished me to do with my life. But there were so many things--so much confusion--so much difficulty--and the end is--here!" He smiled. "Well! It is a quiet end,--they say the devil knocks at the gate of the monastery often at midnight, but he never enters in,--never--unless perchance you are he!"
Varillo turned himself about pettishly.
"If I were he, I should not trouble you long," he said. "Even the devil might be glad to make exit from such a hole as this! Who is your Superior?"
"We have only one Superior,--God!" replied Ambrosio. "He who never slumbers or sleeps--He who troubles Himself to look into everything, from the cup of a flower to the heart of a man! Who shall escape the lightning of His glance, or think to cover up a hidden vileness from the discovery of the Most High?"
"I did not ask you for pious jargon," said Varillo, beginning to lose temper, yet too physically weak to contend with the wordy vagaries of this singular personage who had evidently been told off to attend upon him. "I asked you who is the Head or Ruler of this community? Who gives you the daily rule of conduct which you all obey?"
Ambrosio's brown eyes grew puzzled, and he shook his head.
"I obey no one," he said. "I am mad Ambrosio!--I walk about in my grave, and speak, and sing, while others remain silent. I would tell you if I knew of anyone greater than God,--but I do not!"
Varillo uttered an impatient groan. It was no good asking this creature anything,--his answers were all wide of the mark.
"God," went on Ambrosio, turning his head towards the light that came streaming in through the narrow window of the cell, "is in that sunbeam! He can enter where He will, and we never know when we shall meet Him face to face! He may possess with His spirit the chaste body of a woman, as in our Blessed Lady,--or He may come to us in the form of a child, speaking to the doctors in the temple and arguing with them on the questions of life and death. He is in all things; and the very beggar at our gates who makes trial of our charity, may for all we know, be our Lord disguised! Shall I tell you a strange story?"
Varillo gave a weary sign of assent, half closing his eyes. It was better this crazed fool should talk, he thought, than that he should lie there and listen, as it were, to the deadly silence which in the pauses of the conversation could be felt, like the brooding heaviness of a thick cloud hanging over the monastery walls.
"It happened long ago," said Ambrosio. "There was a powerful prince who thought that to be rich and strong was sufficient to make all the world his own. But the world belongs to God,--and He does not always give it over to the robber and spoiler. This prince I tell you of, had been the lover of a noble lady, but he was false-hearted; and the false soon grow weary of love! And so, tiring of her beauty and her goodness, he stabbed her mortally to death, and thought no one had seen him do the deed. For the only witness to it was a ray of moonlight falling through the window--just as the sunlight falls now!--see!" And he pointed to the narrow aperture which lit the cell, while Florian Varillo, shuddering in spite of himself, lay motionless. "But when the victim was dead, this very ray of moonlight turned to the shape of a great angel, and the angel wore the semblance of our Lord,--and the glory and the wonder of that vision was as the lightning to slay and utterly destroy! And from that hour for many years, the murderer was followed by a ray of light, which never left him; all day he saw it flickering in his path,--all night it flashed across his bed, driving sleep from his eyes and rest from his brain!--till at last maddened by remorse he confessed his crime to a priest, and was taken into a grave like this, a monastery,--where he died, so they say, penitent. But whether he was forgiven, the story does not say!"
"It is a stupid story!" said Varillo, opening his eyes, and smiling in the clear, candid way he always assumed when he had anything to hide. "It has neither point nor meaning."
"You think not?" said Ambrosio. "But perhaps you are not conscious of God. If you were, that sunbeam we see now should make you careful, lest an angel should be in it!"
"Careful? Why should I be careful?" Varillo half raised himself on the bed. "I have nothing to hide!"
At this Ambrosio began to laugh.
"Oh, you are happy--happy!" he exclaimed. "You are the first I ever heard say that! Nothing to hide! Oh, fortunate, fortunate man! Then indeed you should not be here--for we all have something to hide, and we are afraid even of the light,--that is why we make such narrow holes for it; we are always praying God not to look at our sins,--not to uncover them and show us what vile souls we are--we men who could be as gods in life, if we did not choose to be devils--"