Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 41
CHAPTER XLI.
Clenching the Nail, and the Corona of the Dream Upon the Cardinal.
Cardinal Power sat alone in his front drawing-room at Archbishop’s House, fatigued with preaching a long sermon at Sunday vespers at one of the Kensington churches, and depressed by lugubrious thoughts inevitably suggested by the bad news from headquarters which we have already sketched. Even independently of that, it seemed to him that the Catholic interest was on the wane. ‘True, it had been so before many times in history, but this time the conditions were different. In former ages persecution was looked upon as a fiery trial out of which the faithful emerged more strong in their faith than ever; now it had no such effect; on the contrary, its effect was to show men the disagreeable side of a profession of religion about which they were not very keen, even on its pleasant side. It did not evoke their indignation against the persecutor, nor their chivalrous zeal for the persecuted; it merely set them thinking that perhaps they had better leave the other world alone, and look more sharply after their interests in this. The practical result of such a change of mind was a diminution of the material support hitherto given to the Church; services were less well attended, and those who did come gave less at the offertory. It looked as if Catholicism were going into a decline, dying of neglect and inanition, through the growing coldness of its members, who had caught the spirit of the age and of the Revolution, and become sceptical, and apathetic, and self-willed. Radicalism in politics, and atheism regarding religion, those were the winning forces of to-day; how were they to be encountered? for the old armoury of sacerdotal intimidation was either laughed to scorn, or used as an argument to justify persecution of the Church. Clearly this state of things must be put an end to somehow, or it would soon put an end to the ancient priesthood, not by the rack, and dungeon, and faggot, and all that ugly sort of romance, but by the modern prosaic and far more efficacious method of simply taking away the means of subsistence. In these days, the secular arm of the church is money; and if the laity are going to refuse to pay for the salvation of their souls, what is to be done? There is only one thing to be done—their devotion must be bought back at any price, any sacrifice, any conceivable compact with heaven, earth, or hell. But is there any price which will buy it? How if there be none? Then the days of Catholicism, of Christianity, of religion, are numbered.
Such were the prelate’s sage but not cheerful reflections, as he leant back in his favourite easy chair, and bent his gaze at that part of the room where our heroine and her uncle had sat in their memorable interview with him in days that were recent, yet separated from the present time by Queenstown, the Revolution, and the Italian persecution. At this moment the servant entered with two cards, aid the prelate, taking them off the salver to drop them carelessly into the card basket, read with surprise the names of Lady Friga Hawknorbuzzard, and Miss Newman.
‘Ask the ladies to come up, if you please, and bring tea at once. If anyone else calls, say I am engaged.’
‘I must apologise for this sudden intrusion on your Eminence on Sunday,’ said Friga, ‘but this is not a visit of ceremony; we wanted to find you at home. You know my friend Lesbia Newman—rather too well, perhaps—it is she who persuaded me to invade you like this.’
‘As an influential pioneer of the new dispensation, I suppose,’ said the cardinal, coming forward with extended hand, and a smile upon his careworn face, which was paler than when our heroine last saw him.
‘Not influential, Cardinal Power; I wish I were; I should know how to exert my influence.’
‘Because the most important way she could exert it just now, would be over your Eminence,’ said Lesbia.
‘I know you think so, Miss Newman,’ replied the cardinal. ‘But first and foremost, let me give you some tea. And where is Mr Bristley? Not unwell, I hope?’
‘No, my uncle is quite well, thanks, Cardinal Power; but he is not in town. We two came up together on purpose to see you, and with his knowledge.’
‘From which it is not difficult to surmise the object of your visit,’ said the cardinal. ‘Do you know, I was just thinking of you when the man brought in your card. But seeing Lady Friga with you is quite an unexpected pleasure.’
‘Thinking of me! And, pray, what were you thinking about me, Cardinal Power?’ asked Lesbia, looking at him straight and searchingly.
The cardinal saw the imprudence of his confession; but there was no receding.
‘I was—balancing the—pros and cons.’
‘Of what?’
‘Why, of the—the whole question, in fact.’
‘Then I think,’ said Lesbia, laughing, ‘that it is a pity there is not a fourth person present to assist the rise and fall of your Eminence’s scales. I don’t mean my uncle; I refer to a lady. Need I name her?’
‘You mean that sorceress Madame Pisa-Vitri. She is bent on the destruction of the Church, Miss Newman.’
‘I hope not, Cardinal Power, because if she is bent upon it, she will probably compass it.’
‘A pretty state of things indeed, for the Catholic Roman Church to have to grovel in the dust before a—combination of this kind!’ said the prelate bitterly. He had it on the tip of his tongue to say ‘before a woman,’ but checked himself in time.
‘But I do not understand, Cardinal Power,’ said Lesbia, ‘how the balancing in your mind of the question of your Church’s future made you think of me, as you say it did. What have I to do with the pros and cons?’
She said this in order to help him out; but her look told him plainly that she did understand. He therefore felt no awkwardness in plunging forth with in medias res.
‘You have this to do with them, Miss Newman, that the suggestions you made to me on a former occasion about Madonna-worship—I say you, because I look upon you and your uncle as one in this connection—may now, by the force of circumstances, be worth considering. We are as an ox fallen into a pit, and we must be pulled out, though it be the Sabbath.’
‘I see. Infallibility must accommodate itself to the exigencies of a fallible world,’ said Lesbia, at which both the others chuckled. ‘Well, better late than never, Cardinal Power. If his Holiness could be induced to say as much to Signora Pisa-Vitri as you have now insinuated to me, all might yet be well. You say she is bent on destroying the Church; I don’t believe it. I believe she is bent on nothing more than compelling the Church to do its duty. She is within her right in using her power relentlessly, for she is a Catholic. I—speaking to you as a non-Catholic—can but suggest and advise.’
‘Suggest and advise!’ exclaimed the cardinal, laughing in his turn. ‘But, my dear Miss Newman, you suggest earthquakes and advise floods. Do you look upon it as a small matter between ourselves that the Catholic Church of Rome should tell her faithful people all round the globe that the worship of Christ has been found to be a mistake, and that henceforward they are to go in for Venus?’
‘Small or great, Cardinal Power,’ took up Friga, who thought it time to let him see that she was of one mind with her friend, ‘that’s about the state of the case. Better go in for Venus than for another sort of dissipation, especially that passive sort which consists in being scattered to the winds. Cogitavit Domina dissipare murum filiæ Sion. That is the earthquake and the flood you have to fear and to avoid.’
The prelate looked at her in some surprise, then he asked,—
‘I presume, then, that you reject Christianity altogether, Lady Friga?’
‘I reject it in its present form,’ she replied, ‘because it embodies the old curse of man-worship. But let that be put an end to, and the place of Christ may still be found beneath that of his mother; it may be recognised by those who are willing to include Hadrian’s cult of Antinous in the economy of the spiritual world.’
‘So much for masculine divinity,’ observed the cardinal, with quiet sarcasm. ‘I may perhaps, however, be permitted to hope, Lady Friga, that when the new Christianity is promulgated, it will not be found to insist upon Antinomianism as necessary to salvation?’
‘I think we need hardly settle that point now, cardinal,’ said Lesbia. ‘Begin at the beginning; establish divine order first, and see to its corollaries afterwards.’
‘Let doctrine take what shape it will, Cardinal Power,’ added Friga, ‘the practical consideration is this, that a new and disobedient generation is growing up around you—I almost belong to it myself. This rising generation will insist upon your schools being ordered to its liking. It will not be enough for you to take Catholicism in its present unsatisfactory shape and wrap it up in a cover of good music and evening parties and entertainments, and pleasant outings with pleasant companions on holidays; you must recast the faith itself and make it palatable, not merely disguise it, otherwise your pupils will swallow the jam, but take care to spit out the pill.’
The cardinal looked up for a moment, and smiled at this realistic metaphor; then he asked, addressing both his visitors,—
‘But with what face could I go to the Church or to the world, and say that Christianity must yield its place to Venus?’
Lesbia at once replied,—
‘I cannot admit, Cardinal Power, that the worship of the Madonna, such as your Church is called upon to practise, and to some little extent does already practise, is accurately described as the cult of Venus. Love and beauty may be the sceptre of womanhood; but they are not womanhood itself. I cannot even recognise them as the sceptre, unless you are prepared to assign to those two words a vastly nobler meaning than they have hitherto borne in vulgar parlance. If by love you are prepared to signify that lifting up of the heart toward a superior being which finds its delight in the feeling of self-abasement to her, and cares for sensual gratifications only so far as they can be made by careful study and dicipline the most direct and apt vehicles of that adoration; and if by beauty you intend, not a mere harmony of form and quality, which may be found in various other things after their kind, but the very essence and substance of godhead itself, looking out at you in those kinds of beauty which are peculiar to women—well and good. In that case, I may personally not object to employing the old name Venus. But all this is very different from those gross, brutish ideas with which the name is commonly associated. For example, what do your Don Juans, your rich men about town, who can buy as many women as are to be bought for money, know of the higher pleasures which I have specified? Nothing. To them a woman is ‘pretty,’ or ‘nice,’ or ‘jolly,’ just as a cigar or a bottle of wine is in good condition; they set about the conquest of a ‘fine’ woman as they would kill a fine salmon; they attach about as much idea of the sacramental to women as a dog does, probably not so much. Sacrament! It’s sport, sir, rattling sport, nothing more. Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses! No, no, Cardinal Power, you must not call Our Lady Venus; it will not do. The name is misleading; in your mouth or mine it might mean something holy; in the mouth of the world in general it would mean only what is coarse and degrading. As much passionate adoration of Her as you will—the more the better; but it must be sanctified passion; the animal instincts must be subdued to the service of Divine Order, or they are sacrilegious.’
‘I am glad to hear you say that, Miss Newman,’ said the cardinal; ‘we understand each other better now. And I will own that you have both given me much, very much, to think of.’
‘That is something gained, Cardinal Power,’ said Lesbia; ‘only I trust, for the sake of the whole religious world, and in particular for your grand old Church, which surely would not have been preserved to our times unless to fulfil some great mission, that the words we have unskilfully spoken to you to-day may bear fruit in action. There is no time to lose; the Revolution is washing round your base, and if you lift no finger to strengthen yourselves, you will soon be undermined past remedy.’
This brought back the troubles which had beset the prelate’s mind before his visitors came. ‘To disperse them he raised his eyes to Lesbia’s with an expression of reverence he had never worn toward any mortal.
‘And this, then, is to be the end of the great Christian Religion, now near eighteen centuries old!’ he said slowly and dreamily.
‘Ruat Christiana Religio, vivat Ecclesia!’ cried Lesbia, in that weird foreign voice which changed her personality, as she started to her feet, her eyes flashing fire.
The cardinal’s hands dropped by his sides as he rose; the girl’s seized them; and as they lay locked in her strong clasp, his consciousness seemed to reel; and all that took place afterwards, even to the visitors’ leave-taking, was to him as if done in a day-dream. A rainbow-hued mist obscured his sight, shutting out the walls of his drawing-room, though he could see the windows through it; and Lesbia’s concluding words, though spoken gently in her natural voice, were accompanied by, and almost drowned in, the growing music of a sacred march, which sounded in his ears unaccountably; it certainly did not proceed from any band playing in the neighbouring streets.
‘Let that be your banner-scroll, Cardinal Archbishop,’ she said, ‘in the struggle which is before you. One man against the powers of evil still ascendant in your hierarchy. No matter; you will conquer and break them, for She will sustain your arm. Domina illuminatio mea et salus mea; quem timebo? Domina protectrix vitæ meæ; a quo trepidabo? Si consistant adversum me castra, non timebit cor meum: si exurgat adversum me prœlium, in Hâc ego sperabo..’
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The Legate again passed a sleepless night, and morning found him still distracted between conflicting views of interest. Totally as he had succumbed to our heroine’s witchery at the time, he did not in his heart believe in the new worship of the Madonna, any more than he did in the old worship of Christ and the Trinity. The question for him was simply, which would pay? Would he become the more marked man by helping to bolster up the moribund creed, or by boldly hacking it down with his own hand? His servant, knocking at the door with hot water, brought in a telegram which decided him.
‘Please to put up all I require for a month, the same as last time,’ said Cardinal Power. ‘I leave by this evening’s mail from Charing Cross.’