"Ay, ay, we'll hear of ye—for we'll take the papers in just for news of yer!" said Ben, with a rough laugh which covered his deeper feelings, "And mebbe ye'll come back afore we's all drownded!"
And so with a few more kindly words they left him, and he stood at the gate watching their stalwart figures disappear down the different windings of the crooked and picturesque little street.
"God bless them all!" he murmured, "They have taught me many a grand lesson!"
The next day he took his quiet departure in the early morning before the village folks were up and stirring,—and a month later he addressed a large meeting in one of the poorest and most densely populated districts of London on "The Ethics of Christ versus the Clergy", which attracted universal attention and created an enormous sensation. His book began to sell in thousands where it had previously sold in hundreds, and he earned sufficient from the profits of the sale to keep him going in the simple fashion of clothes and food to which he had strictly disciplined himself, so that he felt free to plunge into the thick of the fight. And he straightway did so. His name became a terror to liars, and a clarion sound of alarm in the ears of social hypocrites. He wrote another book which obtained even a larger hearing than the first—and he spoke to the people on an average once a week, wherever he could assemble them together. All his addresses were made gratuitously, and he soon resembled a sort of blazing torch in the darkness, to which the crowds rushed for light and leading. In the midst of the sensation his writings and orations were creating, a noble lord, with several Church livings in his gift, asked him to stand for Parliament, and offered to pay the expenses of his election. At first Aubrey was sufficiently tempted by the offer to pause hesitatingly on the verge of acceptance, but twenty-four hours' hard thinking promptly pulled him together. "No," he said—"I see what you mean! You and your party wish to tie my hands—to gag my mouth, and make me as one of yourselves—no, I will not consent to it. I will serve the people with all my life and soul!—but not in YOUR way!"
And to avoid further discussion he went straight out of England for a time, and travelled through Europe, making friends everywhere, and learning new phases of the "Christian Dispensation" at every turn in his road. Paris had held him fascinated for a long while, not only because he saw her doom written like that of Babylon in letters of fire, and Ruin, like a giant bird of prey hovering over her with beak and claw prepared to pick the very flesh from her bones,—but also because he had met Angela Sovrani, one of the most rarely-gifted types of womanhood he had ever seen. He recognised her genius at once, and marvelled at it. And still more did he marvel at her engagement of marriage with Florian Varillo. That such a fair, proud creature so splendidly endowed, could consent to unite herself to a man so vastly inferior, was an interesting puzzle to him. He had met Varillo by chance in Naples one winter before he ever saw Angela, and knew that half his claim to the notice of the social world there was the fact of his betrothal to the famous "Sovrani." And moved by a strange desire to follow out this romance, and also because he was completing his studies of the Roman Church viewed as a "moral support to the education and elevation of man," he, after leaving Paris, and paying a brief visit to Florence on a matter of business which could not be attended to otherwise than personally, went on as though drawn by some invisible magnet to Rome. He had only been twenty-four hours in the city, when chance had led him under the balcony where the sculptured angels fronted the moon, and from whence the sweet voice of Sylvie Hermenstein had floated towards him with the words,—
"Ti voglio ben assai, E tu non pensi a me."
And he who had faced crowds without a tremor, and had flung thunderbolts of splendid defiance at shams, with the manner of a young Ajax defying the lightning, now found himself strangely put out and disturbed in his usual composure by the innocent aspect, and harmless perfume of a rose,—a mere little pink petalled thing, with not even a thorn on its polished green stalk! He had placed it in a glass of water on his writing table, and his eyes rested upon it the morning after he had received it with almost a reproachful air. What was its golden-hearted secret? Why, when he studied it, did he see the soft hue of a fair cheek, the flash of a bright eye, the drooping wave of a golden web of hair, the dainty curve of a white arm on which the sparkle of diamonds gleamed? How was it that he managed to perceive all this in the leaves of a rose? He could not tell; and he was angry with himself for his inability to explain the puzzle. He reminded himself that he had business in Rome—"business," he repeated sternly to his own conscience,—the chief part of which was to ascertain from some one of the leading spirits at the Vatican the view taken by the Papacy of the Ritualistic movement in England.
"If you can gauge correctly the real feeling, and render it in plain terms, apart from all conventional or social considerations," wrote his publisher in a letter which had just reached him—"that is, if you dare to do so much—and I think you will scarcely hesitate—you will undoubtedly give great and lasting help to Christian England." As he read this over for the second or third time he remembered that he had an appointment with a certain powerful personage, known as Monsignor Gherardi, that morning at eleven.
"And you," he said, apostrophising the rose with a protesting shake of his head, "were nearly making me forget it!" He lifted the flower out of the water and touched it with his lips. "She was a fair creature,—the woman who wore you last night!"—he said with a smile as he put it carefully back again in its glass, "In fact, she was very much like you! But though I notice you have no thorns, I dare say she has!" He paused a moment, lost in thought, the smile still giving warmth and light to his features; then with a quick movement of impatience at his own delaying, threw on his coat and hat and left the room, saying, "Now for Gherardi!"