Lothair

The only way that Lady St. Jerome could manage Hawkins was through Father Coleman. Father Coleman, who knew every thing, knew a great deal about gardens; from the days of Le Notre to those of the fine gentlemen who now travel about, and when disengaged deign to give us advice.

Father Coleman had only just entered middle-age, was imperturbable and mild in his manner. He passed his life very much at Vauxe, and imparted a great deal of knowledge to Mr. Hawkins without apparently being conscious of so doing. At the bottom of his mind, Mr. Hawkins felt assured that he had gained several distinguished prizes, mainly through the hints and guidance of Father Coleman; and thus, though on the surface, a little surly, he was ruled by Father Coleman, under the combined influence of self-interest and superior knowledge.

“You find us in a garden without flowers,” said Lady St. Jerome; “but the sun, I think, alway loves these golden yews.”

“These are for you, dear uncle,” said Clare Arundel, as she gave him a rich cluster of violets. “Just now the woods are more fragrant than the gardens, and these are the produce of our morning walk. I could have brought you some primroses, but I do not like to mix violets with any thing.”

“They say primroses make a capital salad,” said Lord St. Jerome.

“Barbarian!” exclaimed Lady St. Jerome. “I see you want luncheon; it must, be ready;” and she took Lothair’s arm. “I will show you a portrait of one of your ancestors,” she said; “he married an Arundel.”

CHAPTER 14

“Now, you know,” said Lady St. Jerome to Lothair in a hushed voice, as they sat together in the evening, “you are to be quite free here; to do exactly what you like; and we shall follow our ways. If you like to have a clergyman of your own Church visit you while you are with us, pray say so without the slightest scruple. We have an excellent gentleman in this parish; he often dines here; and I am sure he would be most happy to attend you. I know that Holy Week is not wholly disregarded by some of the Anglicans.”

“It is the anniversary of the greatest event of time,” said Lothair; “and I should be sorry if any of my Church did not entirely regard it, though they may show that regard in a way different from your own.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Lady St. Jerome; “there should be no difference between our Churches, if things were only properly understood. I would accept all who really bow to the name of Christ; they will come to the Church at last; they must. It is the atheists alone, I fear, who are now carrying every thing before them, and against whom there is no comfort, except the rock of St. Peter.”

Miss Arundel crossed the room, whispered something to her aunt, and touched her forehead with her lips, and then left the apartment.

“We must soon separate, I fear,” said Lady St. Jerome; “we have an office to-night of great moment; the Tenebrae commence to-night. You have, I think, nothing like it; but you have services throughout this week.”

“I am sorry to say I have not attended them,” said Lothair. “I did at Oxford; but I don’t know how it is, but in London there seems no religion. And yet, as you sometimes say, religion is the great business of life; I sometimes begin to think the only business.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lady St. Jerome, with much interest, “if you believe that you are safe. I wish you had a clergyman near you while you are here. See Mr. Claughton, if you like; I would; and, if you do not, there is Father Coleman. I cannot convey to you how satisfactory conversation is with him on religious matters. He is the holiest of men, and yet he is a man of the world; he will not invite you into any controversies. He will speak with you only on points on which we agree. You know there are many points on which we agree?”

“Happily,” said Lothair. “And now about the office to-night: tell me about these Tenebrae. Is there any thing in the Tenebrae why I ought not to be present?”

“No reason whatever; not a dogma which you do not believe; not a ceremony of which you cannot approve. There are Psalms, at the end of which a light on the altar is extinguished. There is the Song of Moses, the Canticle of Zachary, the Miserere—which is the 50th Psalm you read and chant regularly in your church—the Lord’s Prayer in silence; and then all is darkness and distress—what the Church was when our Lord suffered, what the whole world is now except His Church.”

“If you will permit me,” said Lothair, “I will accompany you to the Tenebrae.”

Although the chapel at Vauxe was, of course, a private chapel, it was open to the surrounding public, who eagerly availed themselves of a permission alike politic and gracious.

Nor was that remarkable. Manifold art had combined to create this exquisite temple, and to guide all its ministrations. But to-night it was not the radiant altar and the splendor of stately priests, the processions and the incense, the divine choir and the celestial harmonies resounding lingering in arched roofs, that attracted many a neighbor. The altar was desolate, the choir was dumb; and while the services proceeded in hushed tones of subdued sorrow, and sometimes even of suppressed anguish, gradually, with each psalm and canticle, a light of the altar was extinguished, till at length the Miserere was muttered, and all became darkness. A sound as of a distant and rising wind was heard, and a crash, as it were the fall of trees in a storm. The earth is covered with darkness, and the veil of the temple is rent. But just at this moment of extreme woe, when all human voices are silent, and when it is forbidden even to breathe “Amen”—when every thing is symbolical of the confusion and despair of the Church at the loss of her expiring Lord—a priest brings forth a concealed light of silvery flame from a corner of the altar. This is the light of the world, and announced the resurrection, and then all rise up and depart in silence.

As Lothair rose, Miss Arundel passed him with streaming eyes.

“There is nothing in this holy office,” said Father Coleman to Lothair, “to which every real Christian might not give his assent.”

“Nothing,” said Lothair, with great decision.

CHAPTER 15

There were Tenebrae on the following days, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and Lothair was present on both occasions.

“There is also a great office on Friday,” said Father Coleman to Lothair, “which perhaps you would not like to attend—the mass of the pre-sanctified. We bring back the blessed sacrament to the desolate altar, and unveil the cross. It is one of our highest ceremonies, the adoration of the cross, which the Protestants persist in calling idolatry, though I presume they will give us leave to know the meaning of our own words and actions, and hope they will believe us when we tell them that our genuflexions and kissing of the cross are no more than exterior expressions of that love which we bear in our hearts to Jesus crucified; and that the words adoration and adore, as applied to the cross, only signify that respect and veneration due to things immediately relating to God and His service.”

“I see no idolatry in it,” said Lothair, musingly.

“No impartial person could,” rejoined Father Coleman; “but unfortunately all these prejudices were imbibed when the world was not so well informed as at present. A good deal of mischief has been done, too, by the Protestant versions of the Holy Scriptures; made in a hurry, and by men imperfectly acquainted with the Eastern tongues, and quite ignorant of Eastern manners. All the accumulated research and investigation of modern times have only illustrated and justified the offices of the Church.”

“That is very interesting,” said Lothair.

“Now, this question of idolatry,” said Father Coleman, “that is a fertile subject of misconception. The house of Israel was raised up to destroy idolatry because idolatry thou meant dark images of Moloch opening their arms by machinery, and flinging the beauteous first-born of the land into their huge forms, which were furnaces of fire; or Ashtaroth, throned in moonlit groves, and surrounded by orgies of ineffable demoralization. It required the declared will of God to redeem man from such fatal iniquity, which would have sapped the human race. But to confound such deeds with the commemoration of God’s saints, who are only pictured because their lives are perpetual incentives to purity and holiness, and to declare that the Queen of Heaven and the Mother of God should be to human feeling only as a sister of charity or a gleaner in the fields, is to abuse reason and to outrage the heart.”

“We live in dark times,” said Lothair, with an air of distress.

“Not darker than before the deluge,” exclaimed Father Coleman; “not darker than before the nativity; not darker even than when the saints became martyrs. There is a Pharos in the world, and, its light will never be extinguished, however black the clouds and wild the waves. Man is on his trial now, not the Church; but in the service of the Church his highest energies may be developed, and his noblest qualities proved.”

Lothair seemed plunged in thought, and Father Coleman glided away as Lady St. Jerome entered the gallery, shawled and bonneted, accompanied by another priest, Monsignore Catesby.

Catesby was a youthful member of an ancient English house, which for many generations had without a murmur, rather in a spirit of triumph, made every worldly sacrifice for the Church and court of Rome. For that cause they had forfeited their lives, broad estates, and all the honors of a lofty station in their own land. Reginald Catesby, with considerable abilities, trained with consummate skill, inherited their determined will, and the traditionary beauty of their form and countenance. His manners were winning, and, he was as well informed in the ways of the world as he was in the works of the great casuists.

“My lord has ordered the charbanc, and is going to drive us all to Chart, where we will lunch,” said Lady St. Jerome; “‘tis a curious place, and was planted, only seventy years ago, by my lord’s grandfather, entirely with spruce-firs, but with so much care and skill, giving each plant and tree ample distance, that they have risen to the noblest proportions, with all their green branches far-spreading on the ground like huge fans.”

It was only a drive of three or four miles entirely in the park. This was a district that had been added to the ancient enclosure—a striking scene. It was a forest of firs, but quite unlike such as might be met with in the north of Europe or of America. Every tree was perfect—huge and complete, and full of massy grace. Nothing else was permitted to grow there except juniper, of which there were abounding and wondrous groups, green and spiral; the whole contrasting with the tall brown fern, of which there were quantities about, cut for the deer.

The turf was dry and mossy, and the air pleasant. It was a balmy day. They sat down by the great trees, the servants opened the luncheon-baskets, which were a present from Balmoral. Lady St. Jerome was seldom seen to greater advantage than distributing her viands under such circumstances. Never was such gay and graceful hospitality. Lothair was quite fascinated as she playfully thrust a paper of lobster-sandwiches into his hand, and enjoined Monsignore Catesby to fill his tumbler with Chablis.

“I wish Father Coleman were here,” said Lothair to Miss Arundel.

“Why?” said Miss Arundel.

“Because we were in the midst of a very interesting conversation on idolatry and on worship in groves, when Lady St. Jerome summoned us to our drive. This seems a grove where one might worship.”

“Father Coleman ought to be at Rome,” said Miss Arundel. “He was to have passed Holy Week there. I know not why he changed his plans.”

“Are you angry with him for it?”

“No, not angry, but surprised; surprised that any one might be at Rome, and yet be absent from it.”

“You like Rome?”

“I have never been there. It is the wish of my life.”

“May I say to you what you said to me just now—why?”

“Naturally, because I would wish to witness the ceremonies of the Church in their most perfect form.”

“But they are fulfilled in this country, I have heard, with much splendor and precision.”

Miss Arundel shook her head.

“Oh! no,” she said; “in this country we are only just emerging from the catacombs. If the ceremonies of the Church were adequately fulfilled in England, we should hear very little of English infidelity.”

“That is saying a great deal,” observed Lothair, inquiringly.

“Had I that command of wealth of which we hear so much in the present day, and with which the possessors seem to know so little what to do, I would purchase some of those squalid streets in Westminster, which are the shame of the metropolis, and clear a great space and build a real cathedral, where the worship of heaven should be perpetually conducted in the full spirit of the ordinances of the Church. I believe, were this done, even this country might be saved.”

CHAPTER 16

Lothair began to meditate on two great ideas—the reconciliation of Christendom, and the influence of architecture on religion. If the differences between the Roman and Anglican Churches, and between the papacy and Protestantism generally arose, as Father Coleman assured him, and seemed to prove, in mere misconception, reconciliation, though difficult, did not seem impossible, and appeared to be one of the most efficient modes of defeating the atheists. It was a result which, of course, mainly depended on the authority of Reason; but the power of the imagination might also be enlisted in the good cause through the influence of the fine arts, of which the great mission is to excite, and at the same time elevate, the feelings of the human family. Lothair found himself frequently in a reverie over Miss Arundel’s ideal fane; and, feeling that he had the power of buying up a district in forlorn Westminster, and raising there a temple to the living God, which might influence the future welfare of millions, and even effect the salvation of his country, he began to ask himself whether he could incur the responsibility of shrinking from the fulfilment of this great duty.

Lothair could not have a better adviser on the subject of the influence of architecture on religion than Monsignore Catesby. Monsignore Catesby had been a pupil of Pugin; his knowledge of ecclesiastical architecture was only equalled by his exquisite taste. To hear him expound the mysteries of symbolical art, and expatiate on the hidden revelations of its beauteous forms, reached even to ecstasy. Lothair hung upon his accents like a neophyte. Conferences with Father Coleman on those points of faith on which they did not differ, followed up by desultory remarks on those points of faith on which they ought not to differ—critical discussions with Monsignore Catesby on cathedrals, their forms, their purposes, and the instances in several countries in which those forms were most perfect and those purposes best secured—occupied a good deal of time; and yet these engaging pursuits were secondary in real emotion to his frequent conversations with Miss Arundel in whose society every day he took a strange and deeper interest.

She did not extend to him that ready sympathy which was supplied by the two priests. On the contrary, when he was apt to indulge in those speculations which they always encouraged, and rewarded by adroit applause, she was often silent, throwing on him only the scrutiny of those violet yes, whose glance was rather fascinating than apt to captivate. And yet he was irresistibly drawn to her, and, once recalling the portrait in the gallery, he ventured to murmur that they were kinsfolk.

“Oh! I have no kin, no country,” said Miss Arundel. “These are not times for kin and country. I have given up all these things for my Master!”

“But are our times so trying as that?” inquired Lothair.

“They are times for new crusades,” said Miss Arundel, with energy, “though it may be of a different character from the old. If I were a man, I would draw my sword for Christ. There are as great deeds to be done as the siege of Ascalon, or even as the freeing of the Holy Sepulchre.”

In the midst of a profound discussion with Father Coleman on Mariolatry, Lothair, rapt in reverie, suddenly introduced the subject of Miss Arundel. “I wonder what will be her lot?” he exclaimed.

“It seems to, me to be settled,” said Father Coleman. “She will be the bride of the Church.”

“Indeed?” and he started, and even changed color.

“She deems it her vocation,” said Father Coleman.

“And yet, with such gifts, to be immured in a convent,” said Lothair.

“That would not necessarily follow,” replied Father Coleman. “Miss Arundel may occupy a position in which she may exercise much influence for the great cause which absorbs her being.”

“There is a divine energy about her,” said Lothair, almost speaking to himself. “It could not have been given for little ends.”

“If Miss Arundel could meet with a spirit as and as energetic as her own,” said Father. Coleman, “Her fate might be different. She has no thoughts which are not great, and no purposes which are not sublime. But for the companion of her life she would require no less than a Godfrey de Bouillon.”

Lothair began to find the time pass very rapidly at Vauxe. Easter week had nearly vanished; Vauxe had been gay during the last few days. Every day some visitors came down from London; sometimes they returned in the evening; sometimes they passed the night at Vauxe, and returned to town in the morning with large bouquets. Lothair felt it was time for him to interfere, and he broke his intention to Lady St. Jerome; but Lady St. Jerome would not hear of it. So he muttered something about business.

“Exactly,” she said; “everybody has business, and I dare say you have a great deal. But Vauxe is exactly the place for persons who have business. You go up to town by an early train, and then you return exactly in time for dinner, and bring us all the news from the clubs.”

Lothair was beginning to say something, but Lady St. Jerome, who, when necessary, had the rare art of not listening without offending the speaker, told him that they did not intend themselves to return to town for a week or so, and that she knew Lord St. Jerome would be greatly annoyed if Lothair did not remain.

Lothair remained; and he went up to town one or two mornings to transact business; that is to say, to see a celebrated architect and to order plans for a cathedral, in which all the purposes of those sublime and exquisite structures were to be realized. The drawings would take a considerable time to prepare, and these must be deeply considered. So Lothair became quite domiciliated at Vauxe: he went up to town in the morning, and returned, as it were, to his home; everybody delighted to welcome him, and yet he seemed not expected. His rooms were called after his name; and the household treated him as one of the family.

CHAPTER 17

A few days before Lothair’s visit was to terminate, the cardinal and Monsignore Berwick arrived at Vauxe. His eminence was received with much ceremony; the marshalled household, ranged in lines, fell on their knees at his approach, and Lady St. Jerome, Miss Arundel, and some other ladies, scarcely less choice and fair, with the lowest obeisance, touched, with their honored lips, his princely hand.

The monsignore had made another visit to Paris on his intended return to Rome, but, in consequence of some secret intelligence which he had acquired in the French capital, had thought fit to return to England to consult with the cardinal. There seemed to be no doubt that the revolutionary party in Italy, assured by the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome, were again stirring. There seemed also little doubt that London was the centre of preparation, though the project and the projectors were involved in much, mystery. “They want money,” said the monsignore; “that we know, and that is now our best chance. The Aspromonte expedition drained their private resources; and as for further aid, that is out of the question; the galantuomo is bankrupt. But the atheists are desperate, and we must prepare for events.”

On the morning after their arrival, the cardinal invited Lothair to a stroll in the park. “There is the feeling of spring this morning,” said his eminence, “though scarcely yet its vision.” It was truly a day of balm, and sweetness, and quickening life; a delicate mist hung about the huge trees and the masses of more distant woods, and seemed to clothe them with that fulness of foliage which was not yet theirs. The cardinal discoursed much on forest-trees, and, happily. He recommended Lothair to read Evelyn’s “Sylva.” Mr. Evelyn had a most accomplished mind; indeed, a character in every respect that approached perfection. He was also a most religious man.

“I wonder,” said Lothair, “how any man who is religious can think of any thing but religion.”

“True,” said the cardinal, and looking at him earnestly, “most true. But all things that are good and beautiful make us more religious. They tend to the development of the religious principle in us, which is our divine nature. And, my dear young friend,” and here his eminence put his arm easily and affectionately into that of Lothair, “it is a most happy thing for you, that you live so much with a really religious family. It is a great boon for a young man, and a rare one.”

“I feel it so,” said Lothair, his face kindling.

“Ah!” said the cardinal, “when we remember that this country once consisted only of such families!” And then, with a sigh, and as if speaking to himself, “And they made it so great and so beautiful!”

“It is still great and beautiful,” said Lothair, but rather in a tone of inquiry than decision.

“But the cause of its greatness and its beauty no longer exists. It became great and beautiful because it believed in God.”

“But faith is not extinct?” said Lothair.

“It exists in the Church,” replied the cardinal, with decision. “All without that pale is practical atheism.”

“It seems to me that a sense of duty is natural to man,” said Lothair, “and that there can be no satisfaction in life without attempting to fulfil it.”

“Noble words, my dear young friend; noble and true. And the highest duty of man, especially in this age, is to vindicate the principles of religion, without which the world must soon become a scene of universal desolation.”

“I wonder if England will ever again be a religious country?” said Lothair, musingly.

“I pray for that daily,” said the cardinal; and he invited his companion to seat himself on the trunk of an oak that had been lying there since the autumn fall. A slight hectic flame played over the pale and attenuated countenance of the cardinal; he seemed for a moment in deep thought; and then, in a voice distinct yet somewhat hushed, and at first rather faltering, he said: “I know not a grander, or a nobler career, for a young man of talents and position in this age, than to be the champion and asserter of Divine truth. It is not probable that there could be another conqueror in out time. The world is wearied of statesmen; whom democracy has degraded into politicians, and of orators who have become what they call debaters. I do not believe there could be another Dante, even another Milton. The world is devoted to physical science, because it believes these discoveries will increase its capacity of luxury and self-indulgence. But the pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble. When we arrive at that barren term, the Divine voice summons man, as it summoned Samuel; all the poetry and passion and sentiment of human nature are taking refuge in religion; and he, whose deeds and words most nobly represent Divine thoughts, will be the man of this century.”

“But who could be equal to such a task?” murmured Lothair.

“Yourself,” exclaimed the cardinal, and he threw his glittering eye upon his companion. “Any one with the necessary gifts, who had implicit faith in the Divine purpose.”

“But the Church is perplexed; it is ambiguous, contradictory.”

“No, no,” said the cardinal; “not the Church of Christ; it is never perplexed, never ambiguous, never contradictory. Why should it be? How could it be? The Divine persons are ever with it, strengthening and guiding it with perpetual miracles. Perplexed churches are churches made by Act of Parliament, not by God.”

Lothair seemed to start, and looked at his guardian with a scrutinizing glance. And then he said, but not without hesitation, “I experience at times great despondency.”