"My dear Sylvie!" remonstrated Madame Bozier, "How can you run on in this way? Do you want to break any more hearts? You are like a lamp for unfortunate moths to burn themselves in!"
"Oh no, not I," said Sylvie, shaking her head with a touch of half melancholy scorn, "I am not a "professional" beauty! The Prince of Wales does not select me for his admiration,--hence it follows that I cannot possibly be an attraction in Europe. I have not the large frame, the large hands, and the still larger feet of the beautiful English ladies, who rule royal hearts and millionaires" pockets! Men scarcely notice me till they come to know me--and then, pouf!--away go their brains!--and they grovel at my small feet instead of the large ones of the English ladies!" She laughed. "Now how is that, Katrine?"
"C"est du charme--toujurs du charme!" murmured Madame Bozier, studying with a wistful affection the dainty lines of Sylvie"s slight figure, "And that is an even more fatal gift than beauty, chere pet.i.te!"
"Du charme! You think that is it? Yes?--and so the men grow stupid and wild!--some want me, and some want my fortune--and some do not know what they want!--but one thing is certain, that they all quarrel together about me, and bore me to extinction!--Even the stranger with the bright stars of an American winter for eyes, might possibly bore me if I knew him!"
She gave a short sigh of complete dissatisfaction.
"To be loved, Katrine--really loved! What a delicious thing that would be! Have you ever felt it?"
The poor lady trembled a little, and gave a somewhat mournful smile.
"No, you dear romantic child! I cannot say with truth that I have! I married when I was very young, and my husband was many years older than myself. He was afflicted with chronic rheumatism and gout, and to be quite honest, I could never flatter myself that he thought of me more than the gout. There! I knew that would amuse you!"--this, as Sylvie"s pretty tender laugh rippled out again on the air, "And though it sounds as if it were a jest, it is perfectly true. Poor Monsieur Bozier! He was the drawing master at the school where I was a.s.sistant governess,--and he was very lonely; he wanted someone to attend to him when the gouty paroxysms came on, and he thought I should do as well, perhaps better than anyone else. And I--I had no time to think about myself at all, or to fall in love--I was very glad to be free of the school, and to have a home of my own. So I married him, and did my best to be a good nurse to him,--but he did not live long, poor man--you see he always would eat things that did not agree with him, and if he could not get them at home he went out and bought them on the sly. There was no romance there, my dear! And of course he died. And he left me nothing at all,--even our little home was sold up to pay our debts.
Then I had to work again for my living,--and it was by answering an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Times, which applied for an English governess to go to a family in Budapest, that I first came to know you."
"And that is all your history!" said Sylvie, "Poor dear Bozier! How uneventful!"
"Yes, it is," and the worthy lady sighed also, but hers, was a sigh of placid arid philosophical comfort. "Still, my dear, I am not at all sorry to be uninteresting! I have rather a terror of lives that arrange themselves into grand dramas, with terrible love affairs as the central motives."
"Have you? I have not!" said Sylvie thoughtfully,--"With all my heart I admire a "grande pa.s.sion." Sometimes I think it is the only thing that makes history. One does not hear nearly so much of the feuds in which Dante was concerned, as of his love for Beatrice. It is always so, only few people are capable of the strength and patience and devotion needed for this great consummation of life. Now I--"
Madame Bozier smiled, and with tender fingers arranged one of the stray knots of pearls with which Sylvie"s white gown was adorned.
"You dear child! You were made for sweetness and caresses,--not suffering . . ."
"You mistake!" said Sylvie, with sudden decision, "You, in your fondness for me, and because you have seen me grow up from childhood, sometimes still view me as a child, and think that I am best amused with frivolities, and have not the soul in me that would endure disaster. But for love"s sake I would do anything--yes!
. . . anything!"
"My child!"
"Yes," repeated Sylvie, her eyes darkening and lightening quickly in their own fascinating way, "I would consent to shock the stupid old world!--though one can scarcely ever shock it nowadays, because it has itself become so shocking! But then the man for whom I would sacrifice myself, must love ME as ardently as I would love HIM! That is the difficulty, Katrine. For men do not love--they only desire."
She raised her face to the sky, and the moonbeams shed a golden halo round her.
"That," she said slowly, "is the reason why I have come here to avoid the Marquis Fontenelle. He does not love me!"
"He is a villain!" said Madame Bozier with asperity.
"Helas! There are so many villains!" sighed Sylvie, still looking up at the brilliant heavens, "And sometimes if a villain really loves anybody he half redeems his villainy. But the Marquis loves himself best of anyone in the world . . . and I--I do not intend to be second in anyone"s affections! So . . ." she paused, "Do you see that star, Katrine? It is as bright as if it were shining on a frosty night in America. And do you not notice the resemblance to the eyes of the stranger who has my rose? I daresay he will put it under his pillow to-night, and dream!" She laughed,--"Let us go in!"
Madame Bozier followed her as she stepped back into the lighted salon, where she was suddenly met by her little Arab page, carrying a large cl.u.s.ter of exquisite red and white roses. A card was attached to the flowers, bearing the words, "These many unworthy blossoms in return for one beyond all worth."
The Comtesse read and pa.s.sed it in silence to Madame Bozier. A smile was on her face, and a light in her eyes.
"I think Rome is not so dull after all!" she said, as she set the flowers carefully in a tall vase of Etruscan ware, "Do you know, I am beginning to find it interesting!"
XVIII.
Aubrey Leigh was a man who had chosen his own way of life, and, as a natural consequence of this, had made for himself an independent and original career. Born in the New World of America he had been very highly educated,--not only under the care of a strict father, and an idolising mother, but also with all the advantages one of the finest colleges in the States could give him. Always a brilliant scholar, and attaining his successes by leaps and bounds rather than by close and painstaking study, the day came,--as it comes to all finely-tempered spirits,--when an overpowering weariness or body and soul took possession of him,--when the very attainment of knowledge seemed absurd,--and all things, both in nature and art, took on a sombre colouring, and the majestic pageant of the world"s progress appeared no more than a shadow too vain and futile to be worth while watching as it pa.s.sed. Into a Slough of Despond, such as Solomon experienced when he wrote his famous "Ecclesiastes," Aubrey sank unconsciously, and,--to do him justice,--most unwillingly. His was naturally a bright, vivacious, healthy nature--but he was over-sensitively organised,--his nerves did not resemble iron so much as finely-tempered steel, which could not but suffer from the damp and rust in the world"s conventionalities. And some "little rift within the lute" chanced to him, as it often chances to many, so that the subtle music of his soul jarred into discord with the things of life, making harsh sounds in place of melody. There was no adequate cause for this,--neither disappointed love nor balked ambition shadowed his days;--it was something altogether indefinable--a delicate, vague discontent which, had he known it, was merely the first stirring of an embryo genius destined one day to move the world. He did not know what ailed him,--but he grew tired--tired of books--tired of music--tired of sifting the perplexing yet enchanting riddles of science--tired of even his home and his mother"s anxious eyes of love that watched his moods too closely for his peace,--and one day, out of the merest boyish impulse, he joined a company of travelling actors and left America. Why he did this he could never tell, save that he was a student and lover of Shakespeare. Much to his own surprise, and somewhat to his disgust, he distinguished himself with exceptional brilliancy on the stage,--his voice, his manner, his physique and his bearing were all exceptional, and told highly in his favour,--but unfortunately his scholarly ac.u.men and knowledge of literature went against him with his manager. This personage, who was densely ignorant, and who yet had all the ineffable conceit of ignorance, took him severely to task for knowing Shakespeare"s meanings better than he did,--and high words resulted in mutual severance. Aubrey was hardly sorry when his theatrical career came thus untimely to an end. At first he had imagined it possible to become supreme in histrionic art,--one who should sway the emotions of thousands by a word, a look or a gesture,--he had meant to be the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day; and with his knowledge of French, which was as perfect as his knowledge of English, he had even foreseen the possibility of taking the French stage as well as the English by storm. But when he gradually came to discover the mean tricks and miserable treacheries used by his fellow-actors to keep a rising comrade down,--when he felt to the core of his soul the sordidness and uncleanness of his surroundings,--when he shudderingly repulsed the would-be attentions of the painted drabs called "ladies of the stage",--and above all, when he thought of the peace and refinement of the home he had, for a mere freak, forsaken,--the high tone of thought and feeling maintained there, the exquisite gracefulness and charm of womanhood, of which his mother had been, and was still a perfect embodiment, some new and far stronger spirit rose up within him, crying--"What is this folly? Am I to sink to the level of those whom I know and see are beneath me? With what I have of brain and heart and feeling, are these unworthy souls to drag me down? Shall I not try to feel my wings, and make one bold dash for higher liberty? And if I do so, whither shall I fly?"
He had come to England at this period,--and in the small provincial town where his final rupture with the illiterate theatrical manager had taken place, there was a curious, silent contest going on between the inhabitants and their vicar. The vicar was an extremely unpopular person,--and the people were striving against him, and fighting him at every possible point of discussion. For so small a community the struggle was grim,--and Aubrey for some time could not understand it, till one day an explanation was offered him by a man engaged in st.i.tching leather, in a dirty evil-smelling little hole of a shop under a dark archway.
"You see, sir, it"s this way," he said, "Bessie Morton,--she wor as good a girl as ever stepped--bright and buxom and kind hearted--yes, that was Bessie, till some black scoundrel got her love at a soft moment, and took the better of her. Well!--I suppose some good Christian folk would say she wor a bad "un--but I"ll warrant she worn"t bad at heart, but only just soft-like--and she an orphan, with no one to look after her, or say she done ill or well. And there was a little child born--the prettiest little creature ye ever saw--Bessie"s own copy--all blue eyes and chestnut hair--and it just lived a matter of fower year, and then it took sick and died. Bessie went nigh raving mad; that she did. And now, what do you think, sir? The pa.s.son refused to bury that there little child in consecrated ground, cos"twas born out of wedlock! What d"ye think of that for a follower of Jesus with the loving heart? What d"ye think of that?"
"Think!" said Aubrey indignantly, with an involuntary clenching of his hand, "Why, that it is abominable--disgraceful! I should like to thrash the brute!"
"So would a many," said his informant with an approving chuckle, "So would a many! But that"s not all--there"s more behind--and worse too--"
"Why, what can be worse?"
"Well, sir, we thinks--we ain"t got proofs to go on--for Bessie keeps her own counsel--but we thinks the pa.s.son hisself is the father of that there little thing he winnot lay in a holy grave!"
"Good G.o.d!" cried Aubrey.
"Ay, ay--you may say "Good G.o.d!" with a meaning, sir," said the leather-seller--"And that"s why, as we ain"t got no facts and no power with bishops, and we ain"t able to get at the pa.s.son anyhow, we"re just making it as unpleasant for him in our way as we can. That"s all the people can do, sir, but what they does, they means!"
This incident deeply impressed Aubrey Leigh, and proved to be the turning point in his career. Like a flash of light illumining some divinely written scroll of duty, he suddenly perceived a way in which to shape his own life and make it of a.s.sistance to others. He began his plan of campaign by going about among the poorer cla.s.ses, working as they worked, living as they lived, and enduring what they endured.
Disguised as a tramp, he wandered with tramps. He became for a time one of the "hands" in a huge Birmingham factory. After that he worked for several months at the coal pits among the lowest of the men employed there. Then he got a "job" in a dock-yard and studied the ways of shipping and humanity together. During this time of self-imposed probation, he never failed to write letters home to Canada, saying he was "doing well" in England, but how this "doing well" was brought about he never explained. And the actual motive and end of all his experiences was as yet a secret locked within his own heart. Yet when it was put into words it sounded simple enough,--it was merely to find out how much or how little the clergy, or so-called "servants of Christ", obeyed their Master. Did they comfort the comfortless? Were they "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves"? Were they long-suffering, slow to wrath, and forbearing one to the other? Did they truly "feed the sheep"? Did they sacrifice themselves, their feelings, and their ambitions to rescue what was lost? All these and sundry other questions Aubrey Leigh set himself to answer,--and by and by he found himself on an endless path of discovery, where at every step some new truth confronted him;--some amazing hypocrisy burned itself in letters of flame against the splendour of church altars;--some deed of darkness and bigotry and cruelty smirched the white robes of the "ordained to preach the Gospel". Gradually he became so intently and vitally interested in his investigations, and his sympathy for the uncomforted people who had somehow lost Christ instead of finding Him, grew so keen that he resolved to give up his entire life to the work of beginning to try and remedy the evil. He had no independent means,--he lived from hand to mouth earning just what he could by hard labour,--till one day, when the forces in his own soul said "Ready!" he betook himself to one small room which he hired in a fisherman"s cottage on the coast of Cornwall, and there sat down to write a book. Half the day he wrote, and half the day he earned his bread as a common fisherman, going out with the others in storm and shine, sailing through sleet and hail and snow, battling with the waves, and playing with Death at every turn of the rocks, which, like the teeth of great monsters, jagged the stormy sh.o.r.e. And he grew strong, and lithe, and muscular--his outward life of hard and changeful labour, accompanied by the inward life of intelligent and creative thought, gradually worked off all depression of soul and effeminacy of body,--his experience of the stage pa.s.sed away, leaving no trace on his mind but the art, the colour and the method,--particularly the method of speech. With art, colour, and method he used the pen;--with the same art, colour, and method he used his voice, and practised the powers of oratory. He would walk for miles to any lonely place where he could be sure of no interruption,--and there he would speak aloud to the roaring waves and wide stretches of desolate land, and tell them the trenchant things he meant one day to thunder into human ears. Always of a fine figure, his bearing grew more dauntless and graceful,--the dangers of the sea taught him self-control,--the swift changes of the sky gave him the far-off rapt expression and keen flash of his eyes,--the pitiful sorrows of the poor, in which, as he had elected to be one of them, he was bound to share, had deepened the sympathetic lines round his delicate mouth, and had bestowed upon his whole countenance that look which is seldom seen save in the cla.s.sic marbles--the look of being one with, and yet above mankind. All the different cla.s.ses of people with whom he had managed to a.s.sociate had called him "gentleman", a name he had gently but firmly repudiated. "Call me a Man, and let me deserve the t.i.tle!" he would say smilingly, and his "mates" hearing this would eye each other askance, and whisper among themselves "that he WAS a gentleman for all that, though no doubt he had come down in the world and had to work for his living. And no shame to him as he gave himself no airs, and could turn a hand to anything." And so the time moved on, and he remained in the Cornish fishing village till his book was finished. Then he suddenly went up to London;--and after a few days"
absence came back again, and went contentedly on with the fishing once more.
A month or so later, one night when the blackness of the skies was so dense that it could almost be felt, it chanced that he and his companions were far out at sea in their little smack, which lay becalmed between two darknesses--the darkness of the rolling water, and the darkness of the still heaven. Little waves lapped heavily against the boat"s side, and the only glimpse of light at all was the yellow flicker of the lamp that hung from the mast of the vessel, casting a tremulous flicker on the sombrous tide, when all at once a great noise like the crash of thunder, or the roll of cannon, echoed through the air, and a meteor more brilliant than an imperial crown of diamonds, flared through the sky from height to depth, and with a blazing coruscation of flying stars and flame, dropped hissingly down into the sea. The fishermen startled, all looked up--the heavy black nets dropped from their brown arms just as they were about to pull in.
"A sign of strife!" said one.
"Ay, ay! We shall hev a war maybe!"
Aubrey leaned far over the boat"s side, and looked out into the dense blackness, made blacker than ever by the sudden coming and going of the flaming sky-phenomenon,--and half unconsciously he murmured, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth,--I come not to send peace, but a sword!" And he lost himself in dreams of the past, present, and future,--till he was roused to give a hand in the dragging up of the nets, now full of glistening fish with silvery bodies and ruby eyes,--and then his thoughts took a different turn and wandered off as far back as the Sea of Galilee when the disciples, fishing thus, were called by the Divine Voice, saying "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!" And in silence he helped to row the laden boat homewards, for there was no wind to fill the sail,--and the morning gradually broke like a great rose blooming out of the east, and the sun came peering through the rose like the calyx of the flower,--and still in a dream, Aubrey walked through all that splendour of the early day home to his lodging,--there to find himself,--like Byron,--famous. His book was in everyone"s hand--his name on everyone"s tongue. Letters from the publisher whom his visit to London had made his friend, accompanied by a bundle of the chief newspapers of the day, informed him that he had in one bound taken his place at the very head and front of opinion,--and, finest proof of power, the critics were out like the hounds in full cry, and were already baying the n.o.ble quarry. The Church papers were up in arms--indignant articles were being added to the "weeklies" by highly respectable clergymen with a large feminine "following", and in the midst of all these written things, which in their silent print seemed literally to make a loud clamour in the quiet of his room, Aubrey, in his sea-stained fisherman"s garb, with the sparkle of the salt spray still glittering on his closely curling bright hair, looked out at the clear horizon from which the sun had risen up in all its majesty, and devoutly thanked G.o.d!
"I have written part of my message," he said to himself, "And now by-and-by I shall speak!"
But he lived on yet for a time in the remote fishing village, waiting,--without knowing quite what he waited for,--while the great Gargantuan mouth of London roared his name in every imaginable key, high and low, and gradually swept it across the seas to America and Australia, and all the vast New World that is so swiftly rising up, with the eternal balance of things, to overwhelm the Old. And presently the rumour of his fame reached those whom he had left behind in the quiet little town of his birth and boyhood,--and his mother, reading the frantic eulogies, and still more frantic attacks of the different sections of press opinion, wept with excitement and tenderness and yearning; and his father, startled at the strange power and authority with which this new Apostle of Truth appeared to be invested, trembled as he read, but nevertheless held himself more erect with a pride in his own old age that he had never felt before, as he said a hundred times a day in response to eager questioners--"Yes,--Aubrey Leigh is my son!" Then mother and father both wrote to Aubrey, and poured out their affectionate hearts to him and blessed him, which blessing he received with that strange heaving of the heart and contraction of the throat, which in a strong man means tears. And still he waited on, earning his bread in the humble village which knew nothing of him, save as one of themselves,--for the inhabitants of the place were deaf and blind to the ways of the world, and read little save old and belated newspapers, so that they were ignorant of his newly celebrated personality,--till one day the Fates gave him that chance for which, though he was unconscious of it, he had been holding himself back, and counting the slow strokes of time;--time which seems to beat with such a laggard pulse when one sees some great thing needing to be done, and while feeling all the force to do it, yet has to control and keep back that force till the appointed hour strikes for action.
There had been a terrific storm at sea, and a herring smack had gone down within sight of land, sinking eight strong men with it, all husbands and fathers. One after the other, the eight bodies were thrown back from the surging deep in the sullen grey morning on the day after the catastrophe,--one after the other they were borne reverently up from the sh.o.r.e to the village, there to be claimed by shrieking women and sobbing children,--women, who from more or less contented, simple-hearted, hard-working souls, were transformed into the grandly infuriated forms of Greek tragedy--their arms tossing, their hair streaming, their faces haggard with pain, and their eyes blind with tears. Throughout the heart-rending scene, Aubrey Leigh worked silently with the rest--composing the stiff limbs of the dead, and reverently closing the glared and staring eyes; gently he had lifted fainting women from the corpses to which they clung,--tenderly he had carried crying children home to their beds,--and with sorrowful eyes fixed on the still heaving and angry billows, he had inwardly prayed for ways and means to comfort these afflicted ones, and raised their thoughts from the gloom of the grave to some higher consummation of life. For they were inconsolable,--they could neither see nor understand any adequate cause for such grief being inflicted on them,--and the entire little population of the village wore a resentful att.i.tude towards G.o.d, and G.o.d"s inexorable law of death. When the funeral day came, and the bodies of the eight unfortunate victims were committed to the earth, it happened, as fate would have it, that the rector of the parish, a kindly, sympathetic, very simple old man, who really did his best for his parishoners according to the faint perception of holy things that indistinctly illumined his brain, happened to be away, and his place was taken by the a.s.sistant curate, a man of irritable and hasty temper, who had a horror of "scenes," and who always put away all suggestions of death from him whenever it was possible. It was very disagreeable to him to have to look at eight coffins,--and still more disagreeable to see eight weeping widows surrounded by forlorn and fatherless children--and he gabbled over the funeral service as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes well on the book lest he should see some sobbing child looking at him, or some woman dropping in a dead faint before he had time to finish. He was afraid of unpleasant incidents--and yet with all his brusque and nervous hurry to avoid anything of the kind, an unpleasant incident insisted on manifesting itself. Just as the fourth coffin was being lowered into the ground, a wild-haired girl rushed forward and threw herself upon it.
"Oh, my man, my man!" she wailed, "My own sweetheart!"
There was a moment"s silence. Then one of the widows stepped out, and approaching the girl, laid her hand on her arm.
"Are ye making a mock of me, Mary Bell?" she said, "Or is it G.o.d"s truth ye"re speaking to my husband lying there?"
The distraught creature called Mary Bell looked up with a sudden pa.s.sion glowing in her tear-wet eyes.
"It"s G.o.d"s truth!" she cried, "And ye needn"t look scorn on me!--for both our hearts are broken, and no one can ever mend them. Yes! It"s G.o.d"s truth! He was your husband, but my sweetheart! And we"ll neither of us see a finer man again!"
The curate listened, amazed and aghast. Was nothing going to be done to stop this scandalous scene? He looked protestingly from right to left, but in all the group of fisher-folk not a man moved. Were these two women going to fight over the dead? He hummed and hawed--and began in a thin piercing voice--"My friends--" when he was again interrupted by the pa.s.sionate speech of Mary Bell.