“God hath sent me hither unto thee in answer to thy prayer, and according to the measure of thy unselfish wish to render others happy, even so is thy reward. Behold, I am an Angel such as thou hast sought, — given to thee to be thy life’s companion, — invisible to the world, but visible to thee, — ever near thee to help thee in thy work, — to teach thee all thou needs must know, — to warn thee of unsuspected danger and to show thee the difference ‘twixt false things and true. Until thou dost, of thine own will, desire me to depart from thee, I am thy faithful minister and guardian, in God’s name, and for Christ’s glory!”
She ceased, — and the man to whom she had been sent fell on his knees in an ecstasy of joy and gratitude. Kissing the white robe of his heavenly visitant, he cried —
“Thanks be to God for this great miracle! — this wondrous mercy to me unworthy! Now shall I win my soul’s desire! — now shall I be enabled truly to serve my fellow-men! Now no more shall I fall into the faults and errors of my kind, for I have a Spirit of Truth to guide me through the darkest wilderness of doubt and sin! O thou be-loved Heavenly Companion! — if ever I disobey thy voice let my soul be accursed! — if ever I wrong thy pure presence let me perish utterly! — if ever I prove myself unworthy of thy God-given tenderness let eternal fires consume me in sharp torture! — for well I know thou art my utmost good and rescue, and thou wilt save me from inpending evil, and more than all, thou wilt save me from myself!”
Thus he spoke, kneeling before his Angel-guest, — and she, laying her hands in blessing on his head, answered him softly —
“Even so let it be! Thou hast sworn deeply; — take heed lest thou ever break the vow! Thou art as yet untried in the fires of endeavour, — and thy worst foes are not among thy fellow-men, but in thine own soul. Fair in seeming but false in guidance, thy passions will tempt thee to wander astray, and it may be thou shalt deem their teaching and commandment more worthy of obedience than mine. Nevertheless, be of good courage, — go straightly on thy pathway through the world, — do faithfully the work which is given thee to do, and I will tell thee whether it is well or ill.”
And the man arose, strengthened and filled with a divine elation, — great thoughts and new ways for the service, help and hope of all humanity came swiftly to his brain, and as he wrote them down with eager eloquence and passion, the radiance of the Angel’s presence glistened like living sunshine on his words, and her thrilling voice pure-toned and tender, told him “It is well!”
But when he sent his writings out upon the world and made his new thoughts known, men mocked at him, saying: “What fellow have we here? Is he greater or wiser than we, that he should presume to teach us? Let us choke his utterance ere it grows too loud and too convincing, — let us pelt him with the stones and mud of slander, that he may shrink away ashamed and be forgotten! — let us sneer him down and make his life a burden and a misery, — let us break his heart and crush his spirit and tell him that his work is naught!”
And as they said, even so they did; and he who had unselfishly striven for good, was stricken to the heart by cruel words and crueller jests, — and turning eyes of sad reproach upon the Angel at his side, he murmured, “Lo, this is my reward! Seest thou not how I suffer? — yet didst thou not assure me of my work that it was well?”
And the Angel answered: —
“Truly I told thee it was well, — truly I say unto thee now that it is well! This clamour of unkind and envious tongues should be to thee merely as the noise of an idle wind striving to break down a rock that has withstood the storms of centuries! What are men’s opinions unto thee if thou art bent on serving man? If thou dost work for thy fellow-creatures’ good, what does it matter that they should think evil?”
But the man was sullen and silent, and disbelieved his Angel. The malice and injustice of the world troubled his spirit, — and the genius in him was not strong enough to stand continual torture. A sense of weariness and futility oppressed him, — and the longing he had felt to serve others, seemed but a foolish thing — a poor desire, unworthy of attainment. And the Angel sighed and trembled through all her delicate being, nevertheless she held her peace and watched him patiently and faithfully still.
And presently the passions of the man rose up full-armed and seized his hesitating soul. Worldly ambition and the greed of gold possessed him, and with these things a hungry thirst for personal power and fame. Seizing his pen he wrote in haste and flippancy, — not for the help or service of others, but solely for the glorification of self. And his fellow-men laughed and approved him, saying: —
“Lo, now is he become more like us, and is growing wise in the ways of the time! He has ceased to teach us what we do not want to know, and mocks at all things great and worthy even as we do. Let us make much of him! — his genius is dead!”
And they applauded and praised him, and flattered and cajoled and feasted him, and he grew proud and arrogant.
“Now at last,” said he, “shall my work prosper!”
But the Angel at his side looked reproachfully upon him, murmuring —
“Alas, it is ill done!”
He heard the gentle warning whisper, but heeded it not, and turning from the holy radiance of the Heavenly Presence, he plunged with reckless haste and eagerness into the vice and folly of the day, forgetting everything save the prompting of his own will, and the allurement of his own passions. Caring no more for others, he sought only the gratification of self, and by and by, a woman, — a crowned queen of many sins, — came upon him in all the witchery of her beauty, and casting over him the glamour of her eyes she cried —
“With all thy wisdom and thy work thou knowest not the mystery of Love! Come! — I will teach it thee! Here in my arms thou shalt find paradise, and my kiss shall compensate to thee for all the world! Come — come! — leave all this weary effort — drink wine! — be merry! — Give thy starved nature all it craves! — Behold my beauty! Wilt thou find fairer food for perfect joy?”
And as she spoke, she cast herself upon his breast and smiled. But he, ere he embraced her, trembled a little, saying —
“Hush — hush! — Seest thou not an Angel near me? — one clad in sunbeams like the morning who doth beckon me away from thee?”
“Angel!” she cried; “Thou dream est! No angel yet was ever seen, save woman in her loveliness! I am thine Angel! — be content!”
And again she clung to him, — when lo! — the glory of his Heavenly Guardian shone upon him, and her restraining voice, sweet, true, but infinitely sad, gave warning for the last time —
“This woman is thine evil fate! — Beware of her lest thou fall into a darkness deeper than the shadow of death! In following her, thou dost invite thy ruin — her love for thee is naught, — her smiles and kisses are shared by many men, — her ways are pitfalls for thy feet, — her end for thee will be destruction. Arise, and put this curse from thee before it is too late!”
But he, now overcome and drawn into the thrall of sin, suddenly raged and swore, blaspheming God and all that he had once deemed holy. And, turning furiously on God’s Messenger, he cried —
“Henceforth, be silent! This woman is far more to me than thou, for she is real and of the world, — but thou art naught save a vision of my fancy, — a chimera of the night — a dream evolved from idle thoughts! What have I to do with thee, thou foolish spectre whom I have deemed an Angel! Angel? There are no Angels! — and thou — thou art not Truth, — thou art a Lie!”
Even as he uttered the wicked words, the Angel vanished. Great darkness fell upon him and deep silence; — and to the soul that had rejected Heaven, Heaven’s gates were closed.
* * * * * *
Many years passed, — years of distress and poverty and pain, — and he who had once been given an angel-spirit of Truth to be his guide, sought everywhere for Truth and found it not. The woman he had loved betrayed and fooled him, — friends deserted him, — fortune evaded him. No more the glow of inspiration warmed his thoughts, — the
fires of great endeavour were burnt out and dead. Starvation stared him in the face, — disease laid hold upon his life, — and maddened by despair he poured forth curses on his fate, too blind to see that all his wretchedness was but his own choice and his own creation. Wrapped in his own weak egotism, — injured by his own arrogance, he called God unjust, and saw no blame in himself for any of his actions. And one night in his foolish frenzy, he flung the last poor pitiful defiance of a coward’s nature against the invincible Eternal, and rushed on death, self-slain, — for in his folly he imagined death to be the end of all things. Stark and stiff his body lay, senseless and sightless — without a loving hand to close its glazing eyes — without a friend to lay one flower of sweet regret upon its breast; — but his Soul, stained thick with evil, sprang forth into the shuddering consciousness of life again, — new life, — burning life, — life crowded with wild memories and fierce remorse, — and so, in dumb sharp agony passed out into the mystery and endless space of worlds eternal.
* * * * * *
Up on the verge of Heaven the Angels of the Gateway still gather in their glistening white multitudes, watching and waiting. And One of them, more sorrowful than glad of aspect, kneels on the very threshold of that silent portal, and bending over it, gazes with radiant, searching, pitying eyes down, far down into the illimitable depths where planets bloom and fade like flowers, and where the proud and perjured souls of men wander from star to star, self-tortured and accurst, seeking too late the paradise and peace of God, which they on earth, of their own will refused. She is a glorious Spirit, with hair the colour of the sun and wings of fire — a Spirit of pure Truth, who though rejected, still doth watch for one lost soul — the soul of him whom she was sent to serve.
“Guide him, O Heavenly Master of all worlds!” she prays— “Through all the dark and mystic spaces of thine unexplored and unknown deeps, draw him in safety to the Kingdom! Hear my appeal, O thou Supreme Creator, and pardon him! — for notwithstanding that he turned from me and wronged me, still would I save and rescue him!”
And the lost Soul hears her voice like music in his self-created gloom, — and through the dire confusion of a thousand torments, sees her pure face shine like a distant star upon him. Yet striving up to her he strives in vain, — knowing her now in all her radiant worth, he knows too late — and recognising Truth at last he may not reach it. For between Truth and Falsehood is a great gulf fixed — and God’s Voice hath declared, “Whoso rejecteth the Divine shall be by the Divine rejected.” And Justice cannot change itself for all the pleadings of the saints and seraphim. Thus in the outer Darkness there is always weeping, — and in the inner Light always a music of perpetual prayer; for forever and forever Love contends with Doubt, — forever and forever Truth comes and is rejected, — forever and forever God sets wide the door of Heaven, bidding us enter in, and we by choice bar it against ourselves.
Nevertheless the despised Angel waits!
THE HIRED BABY
A dark, desolate December night, a night that clung to the metropolis like a wet black shroud, a night in which the heavy, low-hanging vapours melted every now and then into a slow, reluctant rain, cold as icicle-drops in a rock cavern. People passed and repassed in the streets like ghosts in a bad dream; the twinkling gas-light showed them at one moment rising out of the fog, and then disappearing from view as though suddenly engulfed in a vaporous ebon sea. With muffled, angry shrieks, the metropolitan trains deposited their shoals of shivering, coughing travelers at the several stations, where sleepy officials, rendered vicious by the weather, snatched the tickets from their hands with offensive haste and roughness. Omnibus conductors grew ill-tempered and abusive without any seemingly adequate reason; shopkeepers became flippant, disobliging, and careless of custom; cabmen shouted derisive or denunciatory language after their rapidly retreating fares; in short, everybody was in a discontented, almost spiteful humour, with the exception of those few aggressively cheerful persons who are in the habit of always making the best of everything, even bad weather. Down the long wide vista of the Cromwell Road, Kensington, the fog had it all its own way; it swept on steadily, like thick smoke from a huge fire, choking the throats and blinding the eyes of foot-passengers, stealing through the crannies of the houses, and chilling the blood of even those luxurious individuals who, seated in elegant drawing-rooms before blazing fires, easily forgot that there were such bitter things as cold and poverty in that outside world against which they had barred their windows. At one house in particular — a house with gaudy glass doors and somewhat spoiled yellow silk curtains at the windows, a house that plainly said to itself, “Done up for show!” to all who cared to examine its exterior — there stood a closed brougham, drawn by a prancing pair of fat horses. A coachman of distinguished appearance sat on the box; a footman of irreproachable figure stood waiting on the pavement, his yellow-gloved hand resting elegantly on the polished silver knob of the carriage door. Both these gentlemen were resolute and inflexible of face; they looked as if they had determined on some great deed that should move the world to wild applause; but, truth to tell, they had only just finished a highly satisfactory “meat-tea,” and before this grave silence had fallen upon them, they had been discussing the advisability of broiled steak and onions for supper. The coachman had inclined to plain mutton-chops as being easier of digestion; the footman had earnestly asseverated his belief in the superior succulence and sweetness of the steak and onions, and in the end he had gained his point. This weighty question being settled, they had gradually grown reflective on the past, present, and future joys of eating at some one else’s expense, and in this bland and pleasing state of meditation they were still absorbed. The horses were impatient, and pawed the muddy ground with many a toss of their long manes and tails, the steam from their glossy coats mingling with the ever-thickening density of the fog. On the white stone steps of the residence before which they waited was an almost invisible bundle, apparently shapeless and immovable. Neither of the two gorgeous personages in livery observed it; it was too far back in a dim corner, too unobtrusive, for the casual regard of their lofty eyes. Suddenly the glass doors before mentioned were thrown apart with a clattering noise, a warmth and radiance from the entrance-hall thus displayed streamed into the foggy street, and at the same instant the footman, still with grave and imperturbable countenance, opened the brougham. An elderly lady, richly dressed, with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant little mouth, who held up her satin-and-lace skirts with a sort of fastidious disdain, as though she scorned to set foot on earth that was not carpeted with the best velvet pile. As they approached their carriage the inert dark bundle, crouched in the corner, started into life — a woman, with wild hair and wilder eyes, whose pale lips quivered with suppressed weeping as her piteous voice broke into sudden clamour:
“Oh, lady!” she cried, “for the love of God, a trifle! Oh, lady, lady!”
But the “lady,” with a contemptuous sniff and a shake of her scented garments, passed her before she could continue her appeal, and she turned with a sort of faint hope to the softer face of the girl.
“Oh, my dear, do have pity! Just the smallest little thing, and God will bless you! You are rich and happy — and I am starving! Only a penny! For the baby — the poor little baby!” And she made as though she would open her tattered shawl and reveal some treasure hidden therein, but shrunk back, repelled by the cold, merciless gaze that fell upon her from those eyes, in which youth dwelt without tenderness.
“You have no business on our door step,” said the girl, harshly. “Go away directly, or I shall tell my servant to call a policeman.”
Then, as she entered the brougham after her mother, she addressed the respectable footman angrily, giving him the benefit of a strong nasal intonation.
“Howard, why do you let such dirty beggars come ne
ar the carriage? What are you paid for, I should like to know? It is perfectly disgraceful to the house!”
“Very sorry, miss!” said the footman, gravely. “I didn’t see the — the person before.” Then shutting the brougham door, he turned with a dignified air to the unfortunate creature, who still lingered near, and, with a sweeping gesture of his gold-embroidered coat-sleeve, said majestically:
“Do you ‘ear? Be hoff!”
Then, having thus performed his duty, he mounted the box beside his friend the coachman, and the equipage rattled quickly away, its gleaming lights soon lost in the smoke-laden vapours that drooped downward like funeral hangings from the invisible sky to the scarcely visible ground. Left to herself, the woman who had vainly sought charity from those in whom no charity existed, looked up despairingly, as one distraught, and seemed as though she would have given vent to some fierce exclamation, when a feeble wail came pitifully forth from the sheltering folds of her shawl. She restrained herself instantly, and walked on at a rapid pace, scarcely heeding whither she went, till she reached the Catholic church known as the “Oratory.” Its unfinished facade loomed darkly out of the fog; there was nothing picturesque or inviting about it, yet there were people passing softly in and out, and through the swinging to and fro of the red baize-covered doors there came a comforting warm glimmer of light. The woman paused, hesitated, and then, having apparently made up her mind, ascended the broad steps, looked in, and finally entered. The place was strange to her; she knew nothing of its religious meaning, and its cold, uncompleted appearance oppressed her. There were only some half-dozen persons scattered about, like black specks, in its vast white interior, and the fog hung heavily in the vaulted dome and dark little chapels. One corner alone blazed with brilliancy and colour; this was the altar of the Virgin. Toward it the tired vagrant made her way, and on reaching it sank on the nearest chair as though exhausted. She did not raise her eyes to the marble splendours of the shrine — one of the masterpieces of old Italian art; she had been merely attracted to the spot by the glitter of the lamps and candles, and took no thought as to the reason of their being lighted, though she was sensible of a certain comfort in the soft lustre shed around her. She seemed still young; her face, rendered haggard by long and bitter privation, showed traces of past beauty, and her eyes, full of feverish trouble, were large, dark, and still lustrous. Her mouth alone — that sensitive betrayer of the life’s good and bad actions — revealed that all had not been well with her; its lines were hard and vicious, and the resentful curve of the upper lip spoke of foolish pride, not unmixed with reckless sensuality. She sat for a moment or two motionless; then, with exceeding care and tenderness, she began to unfold her thin, torn shawl by gentle degrees, looking down with anxious solicitude at the object concealed within. Only a baby — and withal a baby so tiny and white and frail that it seemed as though it must melt like a snowflake beneath the lightest touch. As its wrappings were loosened it opened a pair of large, solemn blue eyes, and gazed at the woman’s face with a strange, pitiful wistfulness. It lay quiet, without moan, a pinched, pale miniature of suffering humanity — an infant with sorrow’s mark painfully impressed upon its drawn, small features. Presently it stretched forth a puny hand and feebly caressed its protectress, and this, too, with the faintest glimmer of a smile. The woman responded to its affection with a sort of rapture; she caught it fondly to her breast and covered it with kisses, rocking it to and fro with broken words of endearment. “My little darling!” she whispered, softly. “My little pet! Yes, yes, I know! So tired, so cold and hungry! Never mind, baby, never mind! We will rest here a little; then we will sing a song presently, and get some money to take us home. Sleep awhile longer, deary! There! now we are warm and cosey again.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 945
