Chapter 9

Meanwhile, unconscious of the miracle his prayer had wrought, Cardinal Bonpre and his young charge Manuel, arrived in Paris, and drove from the station direct to a house situated near the Bois du Boulogne, where the Cardinal's niece, Angela Sovrani, only daughter of Prince Sovrani, and herself famous throughout Europe as a painter of the highest promise, had a suite of rooms and studio, reserved for her occasional visits to the French capital. Angela Sovrani was a rare type of her sex,--unlike any other woman in the world, so those who knew her best were wont to declare. Without being actually beautiful, according to the accepted lines and canons of physical perfection, she created around her an effect of beauty, which was dazzling and exciting to a singular degree,--people who came once within the charmed circle of her influence could never forget her, and always spoke of her afterwards as a creature apart;--a "woman of genius,--yes!"--they said, "But something more even than that." And this "something more," was just the inexplicable part of her which governed her whole being, and rendered her so indescribably attractive. And she was not without beauty--or perhaps it should be termed loveliness rather,--of an exquisitely suggestive kind, which provoked the beholder into questioning where and how the glamour of it fell. In her eyes, perhaps, the secret lay,--they were violet-grey in hue, and drowsy-lidded, with long lashes that swept the delicate pale cheeks in a dark golden fringe of shadow, through which the sparkle of vision gleamed,--now warningly, now tenderly,--and anon, these same half-shut and deep fringed lids would open wide, letting the full brilliance of the soul behind the eyes pour forth its luminance, in flashes of such lightning-like clearness and compelling force, that it was impossible not to recognise something higher than mere woman in the dazzle of that spiritual glory. In figure she was wonderfully slight,--so slight indeed that she suggested a delicate willow-withe such as can be bent and curved with one hand--yet this slightness stood her in good stead, for being united with extreme suppleness, it gave her a grace of movement resembling that of some skimming mountain bird or sea-swallow, which flies with amazing swiftness yet seeming slowness. Angela never moved quickly,--no one had ever seen her in what is termed a "rush," or a vulgar hurry. She did everything she had to do without haste, without noise, without announcement or assertion of any kind;--and all that she did was done as perfectly as her ability could warrant. And that ability was very great indeed, and displayed itself in small details as well as large attempts. Whether she merely twisted her golden-brown hair into a knot, or tied a few flowers together and fastened them on her dress with a pearl pin, either thing was perfectly done--without a false line or a discordant hue. Her face, form, voice and colouring were like a chord of music, harmonious,--and hence the impression of satisfaction and composure her presence always gave. In herself she was a creature of remarkable temperament and character;--true womanly in every delicate sentiment, fancy and feeling, but with something of the man-hero in her scorn of petty aims, her delight in noble deeds, her courage, her ambition, her devotion to duty and her unflinching sense of honour. Full of rare perceptions and instinctive knowledge of persons and motives, she could only be deceived and blinded where her deepest affections were concerned, and there she could certainly be fooled and duped as completely as the wisest of us all. Looking at her now as she stood awaiting her uncle's arrival in the drawing-room of her "suite," the windows of which faced the Bois, she expressed to the air and surroundings the personality of a thoughtful, charming young woman,--no more. Her black silk gown, cut simply in the prevailing mode of definitely outlining the figure from throat to hips, and then springing out in pliant folds of trailing drapery, had nothing remarkable about it save its Parisian perfection of fit,--the pale "Gloire de France" rose that rested lightly amongst the old lace at her neck, pinned, yet looking as though it had dropped there merely out of a languid desire to escape from further growing, was her only ornament. Her hair, full of curious lights and shades running from brown to gold and gold to brown again, in a rippling uncertain fashion, clustered thickly over her brow and was caught back at the sides in a loose twist after the style of the Greek vestals,--and her fine, small white hands and taper fingers, so skilled in the use of the artist's brush, looked too tiny and delicate to be of any service save to receive the kisses of a lover's lips,--or to be raised, folded pure and calm, in a child-like appeal to Heaven. Certainly in her fragile appearance she expressed nothing save indefinable charm--no one, studying her physiognomy, would have accredited her with genius, power, and the large conceptions of a Murillo or a Raphael;--yet within the small head lay a marvellous brain--and the delicate body was possessed by a spirit of amazing potency to conjure with. While she watched for the first glimpse of the carriage which was to bring her uncle the Cardinal, whom she loved with a rare and tender devotion, her thoughts were occupied with a letter she had received that morning from Rome,--a letter "writ in choice Italian," which though brief, contained for her some drops of the essence of all the world's sweetness, and was worded thus--

"MY OWN LOVE!--A century seems to have passed away since you left Rome. The hours move slowly without you--they are days,--even years!--but I feel your spirit is always with me! Absence for those who love, is not absence after all! To the soul, time is nothing,--space is nothing,--and my true and passionate love for you makes an invisible bridge, over which my thoughts run and fly to your sweet presence, carrying their delicious burden of a thousand kisses!--a thousand embraces and blessings to the Angela and angel of my life! From her devoted lover,

"Florian."

Her devoted lover, Florian! Yes; Florian Varillo--her comrade in art, was her lover,--a genius himself, who had recognised HER genius and who bowed before it, conquered and subdued! Florian, the creator of exquisitely delicate landscapes and seascapes, with nymphs and cupids and nereids and sirens all daintily portrayed therein,--pictures so ethereal and warm and bright in colour that they were called by some of the best Italian critics, the "amoretti" of painting,--he, this wonderful man, had caught her soul and heart by storm, in a few sudden, quickly-whispered words one night when the moon was at the full, hanging high over the gardens of the Pincio,--and, proud of her security in the love she had won, Angela had risen by leaps and bounds to a magnificence of creative effort and attainment so far beyond him, that old and wise persons, skilled in the wicked ways of the world, would sometimes discourse among themselves in dubious fashion thus: "Is it possible that he is not jealous? He must surely see that her work is superior to his own!" And others would answer, "Oh no! No man was ever known to admit, even in thought, that a woman can do better things in art than himself! If a masculine creature draws a picture on a paving-stone he will assure himself in his own Ego, that it is really much more meritorious simply as 'man's work' than the last triumph of a Rosa Bonheur. Besides, you have to remember that in this case the man is the woman's lover--he could soon kill her genius if he chose. He has simply to desert her,--such an easy thing!--so often done!--and she will paint no more. Women are all alike,--they rest on love,--when that fails, then everything fails, and they drop into old age without a groan." And then perhaps a stray cynic would say, "But Angela Sovrani need not depend on one lover surely?--" and he would get for answer, "No, she need not--but it so happens that she does,"--which to everybody seemed extraordinary, more particularly in Italy, where morals are so lax, that a woman has only to be seen walking alone in the public gardens or streets with one of the opposite sex, and her reputation is gone for ever. It is no use to explain that the man in question is her father, her brother or her uncle,--he simply could not be. He is THE man, the one inevitable. Few Italians (in Italy) believe in the chastity of English women,--their reasons for doubt being simply because they see the fair and free ones going to parties, theatres and other places of amusement with their friends of the other sex in perfect ease and confidence. And in the case of Angela Sovrani, though she was affianced to Florian Varillo with her father's consent, (reluctantly obtained,) and the knowledge of all the Roman world of society, she saw very little of him,--and that little, never alone. Thus it was very sweet to receive such consoling words as those she had had from him that day--"Time is nothing,--space is nothing,--and my true and passionate love for you makes an invisible bridge over which my thoughts run and fly to your sweet presence!" The letter lay warm in her bosom just under the "Gloire de France" rose; she pressed it tenderly with her little hand now simply for the childish pleasure of hearing the paper rustle, and she smiled dreamily.

"Florian," she murmured half aloud!--"MY Florian!" And she recalled certain lines of verse he had written to her,--for most Italians write verse as easily as they eat maccaroni;--and there are countless rhymes to "amor" in the dulcet Dante-tongue, whereas our rough English can only supply for the word "love" some three or four similar sounds,--which is perhaps a fortunate thing. Angela spoke English and French as easily and fluently as her native Tuscan, and had read the most notable books in all three languages, so she was well aware that of all kinds of human speech in the world there is none so adapted for making love and generally telling lies in, as the "lingua Toscana in bocca Romana." And this particular "lingua" Florian possessed in fullest perfection of sweetness, so far as making love was concerned;--of the telling of lies he was, according to Angela's estimate of him, most nobly ignorant. She had not many idle moments, however, for meditation on her love matters, or for dreamy study of the delicate beginnings of the autumnal tints on the trees of the Bois, for the carriage she had been awaiting soon made its appearance, and bowling rapidly down the road drew up sharply at the door. She had just time to perceive that her uncle had not arrived alone, when he entered,--and with a pretty grace and reverence for his holy calling, she dropped on one knee before him to receive his benediction, which he gave by laying a hand on her soft hair and signing the cross on her brow. After which he raised her and looked at her fondly.

"My dear child!"--he said, tenderly,--and again "My dear child!"

Then he turned towards Manuel, who had followed him and was now standing quietly on the threshold of the apartment.

"Angela, this is one of our Lord's 'little ones,'" he said,--"He is alone in the world, and I have made myself his guardian and protector for the present. You will be kind to him--yes--as kind as if you were his sister, will you not?--for we are all one family in the sight of Heaven, and sorrow and loneliness and want can but strengthen the love which should knit us all together."

Raising her candid eyes, and fixing them on Manuel, Angela smiled. The thoughtful face and pathetic expression of the boy greatly attracted her, and in her heart she secretly wondered where her uncle had found so intelligent and inspired-looking a creature. But one of her UNfeminine attributes was a certain lack of curiosity concerning other people's affairs, and an almost fastidious dislike of asking questions on matters which did not closely concern her. So she contented herself with giving him that smile of hers which in itself expressed all sweetness, and saying gently,--

"You are very welcome! You must try to feel that wherever my uncle is,--that is 'home'."

"I have felt that from the first,"--replied Manuel in his soft musical voice, "I was all alone when my lord the Cardinal found me,--but with him the world seems full of friends."

Angela looked at him still more attentively; and the fascination of his presence became intensified. She would have liked to continue the conversation, but her uncle was fatigued by his journey, and expressed the desire for an hour's rest. She therefore summoned a servant to show him to the rooms prepared for his reception, whither he went, Manuel attending him,--and when, after a little while, Angela followed to see that all was arranged suitably for his comfort, she found that he had retired to his bed-chamber, and that just outside his door in a little ante-room adjoining, his "waif and stray" was seated, reading. There was something indescribable about the boy even in this reposeful attitude of study,--and Angela observed him for a minute or two, herself unseen. His face reminded her of one of Fra Angelico's seraphs,--the same broad brow, deep eyes and sensitive lips, which seemed to suggest the utterance of wondrous speech or melodious song,--the same golden hair swept back in rich clusters,--the same eager, inspired, yet controlled expression. A curious fluttering of her heart disturbed the girl as she looked--an indefinable dread--a kind of wonder, that almost touched on superstitious awe. Manuel himself, apparently unconscious of her observation, went on reading,--his whole attitude expressing that he was guarding the door to deter anyone from breaking in upon the Cardinal's rest, and Angela at last turned away reluctantly, questioning herself as to the cause of the strange uneasiness which thrilled her mind.

"It is foolish, of course,"--she murmured, "but I feel just as if there were a supernatural presence in the house, . . . however,--I always do have that impression with Uncle Felix, for he is so good and noble-minded,--almost a saint, as everyone says--but to-day there is something else--something quite unusual--"

She re-entered the drawing-room, moving slowly with an abstracted air, and did not at once perceive a visitor in the room,--a portly person in clerical dress, with a somewhat large head and strongly marked features,--a notable character of the time in Paris, known as the Abbe Vergniaud. He had seated himself in a low fauteuil, and was turning over the pages of the month's "Revue de Deux Mondes", humming a little tune under his breath as he did so,--but he rose when he saw Angela, and advanced smilingly to greet her as she stopped short, with a little startled exclamation of surprise at the sight of him.

"Forgive me" he said, with an expressively apologetic gesture,--"Have I come at an inopportune moment? I saw your uncle arrive, and I was extremely anxious to see him on a little confidential matter--I ventured to persuade your servant to let me enter--"

"No apologies are necessary, Monsieur l'Abbe" said Angela, quickly, "My uncle Felix is indeed here, but he is tired with his journey and is resting--"

"Yes, I understand!" And Monsieur l'Abbe, showing no intention to take his leave on account of the Cardinal's non-presence, bowed low over the extended hand of "the Sovrani" as she was sometimes called in the world of art, where her name was a bone for envious dogs-in-the-manger to fight over--"But if I might wait a little while--"

"Your business with my uncle is important?" questioned Angela with slightly knitted brows.

"My dear child, all business is important,"--declared the Abbe, with a smile which spread the light of a certain satirical benevolence all over his plump clean-shaven face, "or so we think--we who consider that we have any business,--which is of course a foolish idea,--but one that is universal to human nature. We all imagine we are busy--which is so curious of us! Will you sit here?--Permit me!" And he dexterously arranged a couple of cushions in an arm-chair and placed it near the window. Angela half-reluctantly seated herself, watching the Abbe under the shadow of her long lashes as he sat down opposite to her. "Yes,--the emmets, the flies, the worms and the men, are all of one equality in the absurd belief that they can do things--things that will last. Their persistent self-credulity is astonishing,--considering the advance the world has made in science, and the overwhelming proofs we are always getting of the fact that we are only One of an eternal procession of many mighty civilizations, all of which have been swept away with everything they have ever learnt, into silence,--so that really all we do, or try to do, amounts to doing nothing in the end!"

"That is your creed, I know," said Angela Sovrani with a faint sigh, "But it is a depressing and a wretched one."

"I do not find it so," responded the Abbe, complacently looking at a fine diamond ring that glittered on the little finger of his plump white hand, "It is a creed which impresses upon us the virtue of being happy during the present moment, no matter what the next may bring. Let each man enjoy himself according to his temperament and capabilities. Do not impose bounds upon him--give him his liberty. Let him alone. Do not try to bamboozle him with the idea that there is a God looking after him. So will he be spared much disappointment and useless blasphemy. If he makes his own affairs unpleasant in this world', he will not be able to lift up his hands to the innocent skies, which are only composed of pure ether, and blame an impossible Large Person sitting up there who can have no part in circumstances which are entirely unknown outside the earth's ridiculously small orbit."

He smiled kindly as he spoke, and looked paternally at "the Sovrani," who flushed with a sudden warmth that sent a wave of pale rose over her face, and made her cheeks the colour of the flower she wore.

"How cruel you are!" she said,--"How cold--how didactic! You would give each man his freedom according to habit and temperament,--no matter whether such habit and temperament led to crime or otherwise,--you would impose upon him no creed,--no belief in anything higher than himself,--and yet--you remain in the Church!"

The Abbe laughed softly.

"Chere Sovrani! You are angry--deliciously angry! Impulsively, enthusiastically, beautifully vexed with me! I like to see you so,--you are a woman of remarkable genius, and yet you are quite a little child in heart,--a positive child, with beliefs and hopes! I should not wonder if you even believed that love itself is eternal!--that most passing of phantoms!--yes--and you exclaim against me because I venture to think for myself? It is appalling that I should think for myself and yet remain in the Church? My dear lady, you might just as well, after unravelling the dirty entanglement of the Dreyfus case, have turned upon our late friend Faure and exclaimed 'And yet you remained President!'"

Angela's violet eyes glowed.

"He was not allowed to remain President," she said.

"No, he was not. He died. Certainly! And I know you think he would not have died if he had done his best to clear the character of an innocent man. To women of your type, it always seems as if God--the Large Person up above--stepped in exactly at the right moment. It would really appear as if it were so at times. But such things are mere coincidences."

"I do not believe in coincidences," said Angela decisively, "I do not believe in 'chance' or 'luck', or what you call 'fortuitous' haphazard arrangements of any sort. I think everything is planned by law from the beginning; even to the particular direction in which a grain of dust floats through space. It is all mathematical and exact. And the moving Spirit--the Divine Centre of things, whom I call God,--cannot dislodge or alter one particle of the majestic system without involving the whole in complete catastrophe. It is our mistake to 'chance' things--at least, so I think. And if I exclaim against you and say,--"Why do you remain in the Church?' it is because I cannot understand a man of conscience and intellect outwardly professing one thing while inwardly he means another. Because God will take him in the end at his own interior valuation, not at his outward seeming."

"Uncomfortable, if true," said the Abbe, still smiling. "When one has been at infinite pains all one's life to present a charmingly virtuous and noble aspect to the world, it would be indeed distressing if at the last moment one were obliged to lift the mask . . ."

"Sometimes one is not given the chance to lift it," interposed Angela, "It is torn off ruthlessly by a force greater than one's own. 'Call no man happy till his death,' you know."

"Yes, I know," and the Abbe settled himself in his chair more comfortably;--he loved an argument with "the Sovrani", and was wont to declare that she was the only woman in the world who had ever made him wish to be a good man,--"But that maxim can be taken in two ways. It may mean that no man is happy till his death,--which I most potently believe,--or it may mean that a man is only JUDGED after his death, in which case it cannot be said to affect his happiness, as he is past caring whether people think ill or well of him. Besides, after death it must needs be all right, as every man is so particularly fortunate in his epitaph!"

Angela smiled a little.

"That is witty of you," she said, "but the fact of every man having a kindly-worded epitaph only proves goodness of heart and feeling in his relatives and friends--"

"Or gratitude for a fortune left to them in his will," declared the Abbe gaily, "or a sense of relief that the dear creature has gone and will never come back. Either motive, would, I know, inspire me to write most pathetic verses! Now you bend your charming brows at me,--mea culpa! I have said something outrageous?"

"Not from the point of view at which YOU take life," said Angela quietly, "but I was just then thinking of a cousin of mine,--a very beautiful woman; her husband treated her with every possible sort of what I should term civil cruelty,--polite torture--refined agony. If he had struck her or shot her dead it would have been far kinder. But his conduct was worse than murder. He finally deserted her, and left her penniless to fight her own way through the world. Then he died suddenly, and she forgot all his faults, spoke of him as though he had been a model of goodness, and lives now for his memory, ever mourning his loss. In her case the feeling of regret had nothing to do with money, for he spent all her fortune and left her nothing even of her own. She has to work hard for her living now,--but she loves him and is as true to him as if he were still alive. What do you say to that?"

"I say that the lady in question must be a charming person!" replied the Abbe, "Perfectly charming! But of course she is deceiving herself; and she takes pleasure in the self-deception. She knows that the man had deserted her and was quite unworthy of her devotion;--but she pretends to herself that she does NOT know. And it is charming, of course! But women will do that kind of thing. It is extraordinary,--but they will. They all deceive themselves in matters of love. Even you deceive yourself."

Angela started.

"I?" she exclaimed.