III
What Mabel saw and heard and felt from eleven o'clock to half-an-hourafter noon on that first morning of the New Year she could neveradequately remember. For the time she lost the continuous consciousnessof self, the power of reflection, for she was still weak from herstruggle; there was no longer in her the process by which events arestored, labelled and recorded; she was no more than a being who observedas it were in one long act, across which considerations played atuncertain intervals. Eyes and ear seemed her sole functions,communicating direct with a burning heart.
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She did not even know at what point her senses told her that this wasFelsenburgh. She seemed to have known it even before he entered, and shewatched Him as in complete silence He came deliberately up the redcarpet, superbly alone, rising a step or two at the entrance of thechoir, passing on and up before her. He was in his English judicialdress of scarlet and black, but she scarcely noticed it. For her, too,no one else existed but, He; this vast assemblage was gone, poised andtransfigured in one vibrating atmosphere of an immense human emotion.There was no one, anywhere, but Julian Felsenburgh. Peace and lightburned like a glory about Him.
For an instant after passing he disappeared beyond the speaker'stribune, and the instant after reappeared once more, coming up thesteps. He reached his place--she could see His profile beneath her andslightly to the left, pure and keen as the blade of a knife, beneath Hiswhite hair. He lifted one white-furred sleeve, made a single motion, andwith a surge and a rumble, the ten thousand were seated. He motionedagain and with a roar they were on their feet.
Again there was a silence. He stood now, perfectly still, His hands laidtogether on the rail, and His face looking steadily before Him; itseemed as if He who had drawn all eyes and stilled all sounds werewaiting until His domination were complete, and there was but one will,one desire, and that beneath His hand. Then He began to speak....
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In this again, as Mabel perceived afterwards, there was no precise orverbal record within her of what he said; there was no conscious processby which she received, tested, or approved what she heard. The nearestimage under which she could afterwards describe her emotions to herself,was that when He spoke it was she who was speaking. Her own thoughts,her predispositions, her griefs, her disappointment, her passion, herhopes--all these interior acts of the soul known scarcely even toherself, down even, it seemed, to the minutest whorls and eddies ofthought, were, by this man, lifted up, cleansed, kindled, satisfied andproclaimed. For the first time in her life she became perfectly aware ofwhat human nature meant; for it was her own heart that passed out uponthe air, borne on that immense voice. Again, as once before for a fewmoments in Paul's House, it seemed that creation, groaning so long, hadspoken articulate words at last--had come to growth and coherent thoughtand perfect speech. Yet then He had spoken to men; now it was ManHimself speaking. It was not one man who spoke there, it was Man--Manconscious of his origin, his destiny, and his pilgrimage between, Mansane again after a night of madness--knowing his strength, declaring hislaw, lamenting in a voice as eloquent as stringed instruments his ownfailure to correspond. It was a soliloquy rather than an oration. Romehad fallen, English and Italian streets had run with blood, smoke andflame had gone up to heaven, because man had for an instant sunk back tothe tiger. Yet it was done, cried the great voice, and there was norepentance; it was done, and ages hence man must still do penance andflush scarlet with shame to remember that once he turned his back onthe risen light.
There was no appeal to the lurid, no picture of the tumbling palaces,the running figures, the coughing explosions, the shaking of the earthand the dying of the doomed. It was rather with those hot heartsshouting in the English and German streets, or aloft in the winter airof Italy, the ugly passions that warred there, as the volors rocked attheir stations, generating and fulfilling revenge, paying back plot withplot, and violence with violence. For there, cried the voice, was man ashe had been, fallen in an instant to the cruel old ages before he hadlearned what he was and why.
There was no repentance, said the voice again, but there was somethingbetter; and as the hard, stinging tones melted, the girl's dry eyes ofshame filled in an instant with tears. There was something better--theknowledge of what crimes man was yet capable of, and the will to usethat knowledge. Rome was gone, and it was a lamentable shame; Rome wasgone, and the air was the sweeter for it; and then in an instant, likethe soar of a bird, He was up and away--away from the horrid gulf whereHe had looked just now, from the fragments of charred bodies, andtumbled houses and all the signs of man's disgrace, to the pure air andsunlight to which man must once more set his face. Yet He bore with Himin that wonderful flight the dew of tears and the aroma of earth. He hadnot spared words with which to lash and whip the naked human heart, andHe did not spare words to lift up the bleeding, shrinking thing, andcomfort it with the divine vision of love....
Historically speaking, it was about forty minutes before He turned tothe shrouded image behind the altar.
"Oh! Maternity!" he cried. "Mother of us all---"
And then, to those who heard Him, the supreme miracle took place.... Forit seemed now in an instant that it was no longer man who spoke, but Onewho stood upon the stage of the superhuman. The curtain ripped back, asone who stood by it tore, panting, at the strings; and there, it seemed,face to face stood the Mother above the altar, huge, white andprotective, and the Child, one passionate incarnation of love, crying toher from the tribune.
"Oh! Mother of us all, and Mother of Me!"
So He praised her to her face, that sublime principle of life, declaredher glories and her strength, her Immaculate Motherhood, her sevenswords of anguish driven through her heart by the passion and thefollies of her Son--He promised her great things, the recognition of hercountless children, the love and service of the unborn, the welcome ofthose yet quickening within the womb. He named her the Wisdom of theMost High, that sweetly orders all things, the Gate of Heaven, House ofIvory, Comforter of the afflicted, Queen of the World; and, to thedelirious eyes of those who looked on her it seemed that the grave facesmiled to hear Him....
A great panting as of some monstrous life began to fill the air as themob swayed behind Him, and the torrential voice poured on. Waves ofemotion swept up and down; there were cries and sobs, the yelping of aman beside himself at last, from somewhere among the crowded seats, thecrash of a bench, and another and another, and the gangways were full,for He no longer held them passive to listen; He was rousing them tosome supreme act. The tide crawled nearer, and the faces stared nolonger at the Son but the Mother; the girl in the gallery tore at theheavy railing, and sank down sobbing upon her knees. And above all thevoice pealed on--and the thin hands blanched to whiteness strained fromthe wide and sumptuous sleeves as if to reach across the sanctuaryitself.
It was a new tale He was telling now, and all to her glory. He was fromthe East, now they knew, come from some triumph. He had been hailed asKing, adored as Divine, as was meet and right--He, the humble superhumanson of a Human Mother--who bore not a sword but peace, not a cross but acrown. So it seemed He was saying; yet no man there knew whether He saidit or not--whether the voice proclaimed it, or their hearts asserted it.He was on the steps of the sanctuary now, still with outstretched handsand pouring words, and the mob rolled after him to the rumble of tenthousand feet and the sighing of ten thousand hearts.... He was at thealtar; He was upon it. Again in one last cry, as the crowd broke againstthe steps beneath, He hailed her Queen and Mother.
The end came in a moment, swift and inevitable. And for an instant,before the girl in the gallery sank down, blind with tears, she saw thetiny figure poised there at the knees of the huge image, beneath theexpectant hands, silent and transfigured in the blaze of light. TheMother, it seemed, had found her Son at last.
For an instant she saw it, the soaring columns, the gilding and thecolours, the swaying heads, the tossing hands. It was a sea that heavedbefore her, lights went up and
down, the rose window whirled overhead,presences filled the air, heaven flashed away, and the earth shook itecstasy. Then in the heavenly light, to the crash of drums, above thescreaming of the women and the battering of feet, in one thunder-peal ofworship ten thousand voices hailed Him Lord and God.
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