The Master-Christian Part 69

The lay-brother made a gentle deprecatory gesture of his hands and retired, and Varillo was left to his own reflections. He lay still, thinking deeply, and marvelling at the unexpected rescue out of his difficulties so suddenly afforded him.

"With Gherardi to support me, I can say anything!" he mused, his heart beating quickly and exultingly. "I can say anything and swear anything!

And even if the sheath of my dagger has been found, it will be no proof, for I can say it is not mine. Any lie I choose to tell will have Gherardi's word to warrant it!--so I am safe--unless Angela speaks!"

He considered this possibility for a moment, then smiled.

"But she never will! She is one of those strange women who endure without complaint,--she is too lofty and pure for the ways of the world, and the world naturally takes vengeance upon her. There is not a man born that does not hate too pure a woman; it is his joy to degrade her if he can! This is the way of Nature; what is a woman made for except to subject herself to her master! And when she rises superior to him--superior in soul, intellect, heart and mind, he sees in her nothing but an abnormal prodigy, to be stared at, laughed at, despised--but never loved! The present position of affairs is Angela's fault, not mine. She should not have concealed the work she was doing from her lover, who had the right to know all her secrets!"

He laughed,--a low malicious laugh, and then lay tranquilly on his pillows gazing at the gradually diminis.h.i.+ng light. Day was departing--night was coming on,--and as the shadows lengthened, the solemn sound of the organ began to vibrate through the walls of the monastery like far-off thunder growing musical. With a certain sensuous delight in the beautiful, Varillo listened to it with pleasure; he had no mind to probe the true meaning of music, but the mere sound was soothing and sublime, and seemed in its gravity, to match the "tone" of the light that was gradually waning. So satisfied was he with that distant pulse of harmony that he began weaving some verses in his head to "His Absent Lady,"--and succeeded in devising quite a charming lyric to her whose honour and renown he was ready to kill. So complex, so curious, so callous, yet sensuous, and utterly egotistical was his nature, that had Angela truly died under his murderous blow, he would have been ready now to write such exquisite verses in the way of a lament for her loss, as should have made a world of sentimental women weep, not knowing the nature of the man.

The last glimpse of day vanished, and the cell was only illuminated by a flickering gleam which crept through the narrow crevice of the door from the oil lamp outside in the corridor. The organ music ceased--to be followed by the monotonous chanting of the monks at their evening orisons,--and in turn, these too came to an end, and all was silent.

Easily and restfully Florian Varillo, calling himself in his own mind poet, artist, and lover of all women rather than one, turned on his pillow and slept peacefully,--a calm deep sleep such as is only supposed to visit the innocent and pure of conscience, but which in truth just as often refreshes the senses of the depraved and dissolute, provided they are satisfied with evil as their good. How many hours he slept he did not know, but he was wakened at last by a terrible sense of suffocation, and he sat up gasping for breath, to find the cell full of thick smoke and burning stench. The flickering reflection of the lamp was gone, and as he instinctively leaped from his bed and grasped his clothes, he heard the monastery bell above him swinging to and fro, with a jarring heavy clang. Weak from the effects of his illness, and scarcely able to stand, he dragged on some of his garments, and rus.h.i.+ng to the door threw it open, to be met with dense darkness and thick clouds of smoke wreathing towards him in all directions. He uttered a loud shriek.

"Fire!"

The bell clanged on slowly over his head, but otherwise there was no response. Stumbling along, blinded, suffocated, not knowing at any moment whether he might not be precipitated down some steep flight of stairs or over some high gallery in the building, he struggled to follow what seemed to be a cooling breath of air which streamed through the smoke as though blowing in from some open door, and as he felt his way with his hands on the wall he suddenly heard the organ.

"Thank G.o.d!" he thought, "I am near the chapel! The fire has broken out in this part of the building--the monks do not know and are still at prayer. I shall be in time to save them all! . . ."

A small tongue of red flame flashed upon his eyes--he recoiled--then pressed forward again, seeing a door in front of him. The organ music sounded nearer and nearer; he rushed to the door, half choked and dizzy, and pus.h.i.+ng it open, reeled into the organ loft, where at the organ, sat the monk Ambrosio, shaking out such a storm of music as might have battered the gates of Heaven or h.e.l.l. Varillo leaped forward--then, as he saw the interior of the chapel, uttered one agonized shriek, and stood as though turned to stone. For the whole place was in flames!--everything from the altar to the last small statue set in a niche, was ablaze, and only the organ, raised like a carven pinnacle, appeared to be intact, set high above the blazing ruin. Enrapt in his own dreams, Ambrosio sat, pouring thunderous harmony out of the golden-tubed instrument which as yet, with its self-acting machinery, was untouched by the flames, and Varillo half-mad with terror, sprang at him like a wild beast

"Stop!" he cried "Stop, fool! Do you not see--can you not understand--the monastery is on fire!"

Ambrosio shook him off, his brown eyes were clear and bright,--his whole expression stern and resolved.

"I know it," he replied. "And we shall burn--you and I--together!"

'Oh, mad brute!" cried Varillo. "Tell me which way to go!--where are the brethren?"

"Outside!" he answered "Safe!--away at the farther end of the garden, digging their own graves, as usual! Do you not hear the bell? We are alone in the building!--I have locked the doors,--the fire is kindled inside! We shall be dead before the flames burst through!"

"Madman!" shrieked Varillo, recoiling as the thick volumes of smoke rolled up from the blazing altar. "Die if you must!--but I will not!

Where are the windows?--the doors?--"

"Locked and bolted fast," said Ambrosio, with a smile of triumph.

"There is no loophole of escape for you! The world might let you go free to murder and betray,--but I--Ambrosio,--a scourge in the Lord's hand--I will never let you go! Pray--pray before it is too late! I heard the devil tempt you--I heard you yield to his tempting! You were both going to ruin a woman--that is devil's work. And G.o.d told me what to do--to burn the evil out by flame, and purify your soul! Pray, brother, pray!--for in the searching and tormenting fire it will be too late! Pray! Pray!"

And pressing his hands again upon the organ he struck out a pa.s.sage of chords like the surging of waves upon the sh.o.r.e or storm-winds in the forest, and began to sing,

"Confutatis maledictis Flammis acribus addictis Voci me c.u.m benedictis!"

Infuriated to madness but too physically weak to struggle with one who, though wandering in brain, was sound in body, Varillo tried to drag him from his seat,--but the attempt was useless. Ambrosio seemed possessed by a thousand electric currents of force and resolution combined. He threw off Varillo as though he were a mere child, and went on singing--

"Oro supplex et acclinis Cor contritum quasi cinis: Gere curam mei finis.

Lacrymosa dies illa,--"

Driven to utter desperation, Varillo stood for a moment inert,--then, suddenly catching sight of a rope hanging from one of the windows close at hand, he rushed to it and pulled it furiously. The top of the window yielded, and fell open on its hinge--the smoke rushed up to the aperture, and Florian, still clinging to the rope, shouted, "Help!--Help!" with all the force he could muster. But the air blowing strongly against the smoke fanned the flames in the body of the chapel,--they leaped higher and higher,--and--seeing the red glow deepening about him, Ambrosio smiled.--"Cry your loudest, you will never be heard!" he said--"Those who are busy with graves have done with life! You had best pray while you have time--let G.o.d take you with His name on your lips!"

And as the smoke and flame climbed higher and higher and began to wreathe itself about the music gallery, he resumed his solemn singing.

"Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurgat ex favilla Judicandus h.o.m.o reus Huic ergo parce, Deus: Pie Jesu Domine Dona eis requiem!"

But Varillo still shrieked "Help!" and his frenzied cries were at last answered. The great bell overhead ceased ringing suddenly,--and its cessation created an effect of silence even amid the noise of the crackling fire and the continued grave music of the organ. Then came a quick tramp of many feet--a hubbub of voices--and loud battering knocks at the chapel door. Ambrosio laughed triumphantly.

"We are at prayers!" he cried--"We admit no one! The devil and I are at prayers!"

Varillo sprang at him once more.

"Madman! Show me the way!" he screamed. "Show me the way down from this place or I will strangle you!"

"Find your own way!" answered Ambrosio--"Make it--as you have always made it!--and follow it--to h.e.l.l!"

As he spoke the gallery rocked to and fro, and a tall flame leaped at the organ like a living thing ready to seize and devour. Still the knocking and hammering continued, and still Ambrosio played wild music--till all at once the chapel door was broken open and a group of pale spectral faces in monk's cowls peered through the smoke, and then retreated again.

"Help!" shrieked Varillo--"Help!"

But the air rus.h.i.+ng through the door and meeting with that already blowing through the window raised a perfect pyramid of flame which rose straight up and completely encircled the organ. With a frightful cry Varillo rushed to Ambrosio's side, and cowering down, clung to his garments.

"Oh, G.o.d!--Oh, G.o.d! Have mercy!--"

"He will have mercy!" said Ambrosio, still keeping his hands on the organ-keys and drawing out strange plaintive chords of solemn harmony--"He will have mercy--be sure of it! Ambrosio will ask Him to be merciful!--Ambrosio has saved you from crime worse than death,--Ambrosio has cleansed you by fire! Ambrosio will help you to find G.o.d in the darkness!"

Smoke and flame encircled them,--for one moment more their figures were seen like black specks in the wreathing columns of fire--for one moment more the music of the organ thundered through the chapel,--then came a terrific crash--a roar of the victorious flames as they sprang up high to the roof of the building, and then--then nothing but a crimson glare on the Campagna, seen for miles and miles around, and afterwards described to the world by the world's press as the "Burning Down of a Trappist Monastery" in which no lives had been lost save those of one Fra Ambrosio, long insane, who was supposed to have kindled the destructive blaze in a fit of mania,--and of a stranger, sick of malarial fever, whom the monks had sheltered, name unknown.

x.x.xVI.

The same night which saw the red glare of the burning monastery reflected from end to end of the Campagna, like the glow of some gigantic pagan funeral pyre, saw also the quiet departure of Cardinal Bonpre and his "foundling" Manuel from Rome. Innocent of all evil, their escape was after the manner of the guilty; for the spies of the Vatican were on guard outside the Sovrani Palace, and one priest after another "relieved the watch" in the fas.h.i.+on of military sentries. But like all too cunning schemers, these pious detectives overreached the goal of their intention, and bearing in mind the fact of the Cardinal's unsuspecting simplicity, it never occurred to them to think he had been put on his guard so soon, or that he would take advantage of any secret way of flight. But the private door of Angela's studio through which Florian Varillo had fled, and the key of which he had thrown into the Tiber, had been forced open, and set in use again, and through this the harmless prelate, with his young companion, pa.s.sed without notice or hindrance, and under the escort of Aubrey Leigh and Cyrillon Vergniaud, reached the railway station unintercepted by any message or messenger from the Papal court, and started for Paris and London. When the train, moving slowly at first from the platform, began to rush, and finally darted swiftly out of sight, Aubrey breathed more easily.

"Thank G.o.d!" he said. "They are safe for the present! England is a free country!"

"Is it?" And Vergniaud smiled a little. "Are you sure? England cannot dispute the authority of the Vatican over its own sworn servants. Are you not yourself contending against the power of Rome in Great Britain?"

"Not only against Rome do I contend," replied Aubrey. "My battle is against all who seek to destroy the true meaning and intention of Christianity. But so far as Romanism is concerned,--we have a monarch whose proudest t.i.tle is Defender of the Faith--that is Defender of the Faith against Papal interference."

"Yes? And yet her bishops pander to Rome? Ah, my dear friend!--your monarch is kept in ignorance of the mischief being worked in her realm by the Papal secret service! Cardinal Bonpre in London is as much under the jurisdiction of the Pope as if he still remained in Rome, and though he may be able to delay the separation between himself and the boy he cherishes, he will scarcely avert it!"

"Why should they wish to part that child from him I wonder!" said Aubrey musingly.

Cyrillon shrugged his shoulders.

"Who can tell! They have their reasons, no doubt. Why should they wish to excommunicate Tolstoi? But they do! Believe me, there is a time of terror coming for the religious world--especially in your great English Empire. And when your good Queen dies, the trouble will begin!"

Aubrey was silent for some minutes.

"We must work, Cyrillon!" he said at last, laying a hand on his friend's shoulder. "We must work and we must never leave off working!