The Master-Christian Part 55

"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 pa.s.sively 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 G.o.d-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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude in which the soul received the announcement of G.o.d'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 G.o.d-influences, Which we, unseeing, feel and grope for blindly, Like children in the dark, knowing that Love is near!"