CHAPTER XVIII
MARIO PLAYS THE DEMAGOGUE
The workman sweats
And little gets;
The rich and fine
On capons dine.
Is this fair play?
Oh, yes! priests say,
For the good God wills it so.
Song of the Bread Rioters.
MARIO sprang from the couch and asked the brothers the way to the refectory—a small building on the Corso Magenta side of the convent’s domain separated by tortuous passages and a courtyard from the rest of the structure. It was on the southern wall of this humble edifice that Leonardo painted the Nazarene and the Twelve at table. Here the picture had spoken to the Milanese four hundred years ago, and here, for all who wished to look, it told still the story of the hour before Gethsemane. By long custom the Bernardines had thrown the place open every day at a certain hour; but Brother Sebastiano, in the light of Brother Ignazio’s black eye, had decided to break the rule to-day. Thus it fell out that when the frenzied reformers of society reached the gate to the arched passage on which the refectory opened they found it locked and bolted and barred. That was a condition calling for the use of axes, and it was the sound of these on the massive oak, ringing across the inner court and penetrating the crooked hallways, that brought Mario from his couch resolved to do something—he knew not what—to save the picture.
“The Last Supper! Our Leonardo!” he exclaimed. “It must be defended!”
“But what can we do, Signor Forza?” asked Brother Sebastiano in despair. “Who can avail against their madness? Heaven shield us! The gate is yielding!”
Mario, trusting to chance to find the way, started off in the direction of the clamour and the sound of crackling oak. With a common impulse the brothers followed, but he turned and besought them not to add fuel to the wrath of the mob. In a flash he realised that the religious as well as every other established order was an object of hatred to-day, and that the wild beast out there would be infuriated the more at sight of the cowl and the tonsured head.
“Let me, at least, go with you!” Brother Sebastiano entreated him.
“Yes; come and guide me to the refectory,” Mario said, catching his arm and leading him away, and with an upraised hand warning the others to stay behind. “But you will go back when I bid you?”
“As you will, Honourable,” the prior acquiesced sadly, and they moved on toward the din at the gate. When they had threaded the gloom of many angular passages and emerged into the sunlight of the courtyard, Mario, seeing on the opposite side the little building that held the picture, asked Brother Sebastiano to return.
“Not yet,” said the other. “If you enter it must be by the postern door, and I have the key.”
“No, no!” Mario protested firmly. “You must come no farther. Give me the key. Go back, I beg you!”
The workman sweats
And little gets;
The rich and fine
On capons dine.
Is this fair play?
Oh, yes! priests say,
For the good God wills it so.
When his ear caught the last lines, jerked out in mighty chorus by the throng in Corso Magenta, Brother Sebastiano handed Mario the key. “Addio,” he said to him, pressing his hand. “Heaven guard you in this danger.”
“Be of good cheer,” Mario returned, and struck across the courtyard. A moment the prior stood there, puzzled to know what the Honourable meant to do, and striving to reconcile his own inactivity with his duty as head of the convent. But, faithful to his promise, he returned to the brothers’ inner sanctum to pray and commit the issue to divine care.
At the moment Mario turned the key in the postern the outer gate gave way, and the rioters, with a yell of triumph, surged into the passage. Between them and the Last Supper stood yet the refectory’s front door, and the sound of axes on this greeted Mario as he entered. The place was in deep gloom, relieved only by faint gleams that stole under the heavy curtains at the windows. To one of these he groped his way, threw back the hanging, and let in a stream of light that fell upon the picture but left the rest of the room in half darkness. He would have let in more light, but there was not time. The door came down, and the axemen, the women with torches, and all the vandal crew rushed into the house made sacred by a painter’s art. At the head of them was Red Errico—he who started the revolt in the Tarsis silk-mill. Before they saw the Narazene and the Twelve they beheld Mario standing in front of the picture—a mysterious figure at first sight, his bandaged forehead and upraised hand thrown into weird relief by the narrow shaft of light that played upon him from the window. It was an apparition that made Red Errico halt and checked for the moment the rush of those at his back.
“Mario Forza!” the leader exclaimed, and the name passed from mouth to mouth, as those in the room moved nearer, pushed by the crowd behind.
“Long live Mario Forza!” a stout-lunged carpenter shouted. “But down with the Supper!”
“Well spoken! On, comrades! Down with it!” a dozen of them chimed in, and there was a general move toward the painting.
“You have right on your side!” Mario proclaimed, in a voice sounding above the growl of the mob. “When you wish to pull down this work of Leonardo it is your right to do so, and no one may say no. You are the people, and the people must rule!”
“Come on, then, let us rule!” the carpenter cried, raising his axe, ready to spring forward, but Red Errico pulled him back.
“Wait!” he commanded. “Wait until the Honourable has spoken.”
“Just a minute, men and women,” Mario went on. “Just a minute let us look at the picture before we blot it out forever. Let us have a last look at the face of that Blessed Workman at the middle of the table. You all know He was a carpenter, and let me tell you that He made as good a fight in His time to help the workingman as you are making to-day.”
“Bravo!” the carpenter exclaimed, lowering his axe.
“He told the rich man to sell all that he had and give to the poor,” Mario began again, the dissentient outbursts of his audience succeeded now by sullen murmurs here and there. “He told him, too, that it was harder for him to get into Paradise than for a camel to go through a needle’s eye. He always had a good word for the poor, and He was never afraid to speak out. And what happened? You all know. So I ask you, for your good,—men and women of Milan,—before you kill His beautiful likeness there, as the heedless ones of old killed Him—before you do this let us look well upon His face, that we may remember long the man who dared to tell the wearers of purple and fine linen that their gifts were not so great as the widow’s mite.”
He paused a moment and no voice in the crowd made reply.
“Most of you have looked upon this picture before,” he continued, every ear attentive now, “for I see among you the faces of those who live in the neighbourhood, and the door here has always been open.”
“It wasn’t open to-day!” broke in one fellow. “But we got in all the same. Eh, comrades?”
“Shut up!” commanded Red Errico, and he was supported by others hissing for silence. “Can’t you wait till Signor Forza has finished?”
“I am not here to make a long speech, friends,” Mario said, smiling. “It is only that I thought it would be good for all of us to have one more calm look at the faces in this group of famous workingmen. They were toilers, like yourselves, those men seated on each side of Christ. It is the hour before Gethsemane. He is going to leave them soon, to be nailed to the cross for telling the world that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and other things just as true. See what honest faces those men have—all but one! Do you see which this is? Can you point out Judas the traitor?”
“Yes, yes!” a score of voices answered.
“The one next to Christ.”
“Donkey! There’s one on each side of Him!”
“He of the long nose.”
“The fellow that’s grasping the bag of silver!”
“Give us more light!” cried others in the rear of the throng. “We can’t see much!”
Mario told them to pull back the hangings at the windows, and this was done so promptly and with such vigour by many hands that some of the curtains were jerked from their fastenings.
“Yes; Judas has his pieces of silver,” Mario resumed, glancing toward the man who had observed Iscariot’s hand gripping the bribe; “and when Christ says ‘One of you shall betray me’ the traitor holds up one hand as if to say ‘Really, I can’t believe that.’ But you see that the brand of guilt is on his face none the less. What a picture it is, and how proud your forefathers have been of it, men and women of Milan. Do you know how long it has been on that wall?”
“I do!” Red Errico called out. “Four hundred years!”
Mario told him he was right, and the leader’s friends looked at Errico in awe as there rose about his head the halo that knowledge creates for the ignorant. “Yes; it was on this very day four centuries ago that Leonardo gave it the last touch. Through all that time it has told its wondrous story, and may go on telling it to you and your children. Who among you will be, like Judas, the first to strike a traitorous blow against the best friend the wage-earner ever had?”
There was no response for what seemed a long space, during which the insurgents looked one another in the face and exchanged decisive shakings of the head. Even Red Errico had no words to utter except “Come away, comrades,” as he pushed through the crowd, which went with him toward the door. But the wild beast was still in their bosoms, lulled to sleep only for the moment by the words of an adroit orator. They gave forth a sullen growl as they moved into the street, looking back darkly at Mario, as if resentful at heart of the power that had killed their desire to violate the old picture.
For Mario, it was all he could do to keep on his feet and make his way back across the courtyard to where the Bemardines awaited him anxiously. The task just accomplished had almost exhausted his strength, ebbed to a low point, as it was, by the blow of the cavalryman’s scabbard and the resultant loss of blood. The wound in his forehead throbbed painfully, and he staggered now rather than walked. From the farther side of the close, to which they had ventured, the brothers saw him approach. They had caught a glimpse as well of the grumbling mob as it retreated from the passage, and they knew their Cenacolo[A] was saved.
“But at what cost!” exclaimed Brother Sebastiano, hurrying forward with the others to the aid of Mario. “Ah, Signor Forza,” he said, taking him by the arm, “you have made all mankind your debtor to-day. But do not speak now, we beg of you. Some time you will tell us the story. Now you must rest.”
Scarcely had they attained the inner sanctum when there was the sound of a halting carriage in Via Fiori, followed by a ring of the door bell. Presently the Cardinal appeared, his step quickened by the account of the event in the refectory given by Brother Ignazio on the way from the outer door.
“Ah, your Eminence,” the young monk was saying, “we feared never to look upon the Honourable’s living face again.”
“Indeed, it is most wonderful that we do so now,” was the prelate’s comment, as he seated himself beside Mario. “Why were you left single-handed to cope with them?” he asked, in reproof meant for the Bemardines.
“Single-voiced, rather,” Mario amended, smiling at the Cardinal’s notion of the encounter. “It was at my behest and against their wish that the brothers took no part.”
“I think I understand,” the Cardinal said. “There was a bull to be tamed and it was better to keep red rags out of sight. A stroke of mind against muscle. But in taming the bull you have almost lost—yourself.”
With words that his looks did not bear out, Mario strove to assure them all that save for the pain where his head was cut his suffering was slight.
“If your Eminence will drive me there,” he said, “I will go to my apartments.”
The Bemardines protested in chorus. “Let us care for you here,” Brother Sebastiano pleaded.
“It is most kind of you,” Mario said, rising, “but sooner or later we must part, and now I feel able to go.”
Seeing him resolute, the Cardinal rose as well and with the brothers all about them they went to the door.
“To our meeting again, Signor Forza,” said the prior in bidding adieu. “Some day you will come and tell us the story?”
“Yes, and you may expect me soon.”
When the rumble of the carriage had drowned the distant roar and crackle of musketry which told that the unequal conflict was still on, Mario spoke his regret that the Cardinal for his sake had lost the train to Como, and an important engagement.
“I would lose all the trains in the world in such a cause,” the other returned. “Did your going to the convent not save our Leonardo? As to the journey, I shall accomplish it yet by some means. The railway strike is general. Traffic has ceased on all the lines north and south. When, I wonder, shall we give to the greatest of our problems the reason we apply to the solution of smaller ones?”
“We are still in social darkness,” Mario said, and the Cardinal detected a note of despair that was strange to him. To the leader of the New Democracy the last two days had been a season of broken illusion, humiliation, and quailing hope for the cause to which he had devoted his life. He had seen the peasantry of many provinces encouraged and uplifted by the co-operative works his party had fostered; he had endured abuse in their behalf, for his foes delighted to brand the movement a nursery of revolt against the established order. It was true that he had not rested content to develop mere industrial concord. He had striven to keep alive the ideal, the sentimental side of the cause. Those who had risen to the idea of his Democracy knew that it touched humanity at every point, that its aspiration was to imbue government with the scientific leaven of to-day as well as the Golden Rule, to the end that Italy’s many ills might be cured. But now, in the face of this outbreak of class hatred, so hostile to the spirit he had striven to awaken, he apprehended as he never had before how little was the progress made. He felt as a gardener who contemplates the weeds growing faster than he can uproot them. He must have betrayed his gloomy reflections, for the Cardinal said, as they turned into Via Senato, and the carriage stopped at Mario’s door:
“The seed has taken root, but is not growing to your wish. For this, my dear friend, do not despair. We set the twig in the earth, and heaven sends the storm to bend it to the tree’s course. We regret the storm; but better always a storm than a calm. Beware of calms in any form. They are nearly akin to death. Life is action, battle, achievement. Real success bids us shape ourselves into God’s plan as fast as it is revealed to us.”
“I thank you,” Mario said, cordially, grasping the Cardinal’s hand. “It is the true, the clear way, and it is full of hope. I thank your Eminence, too, for all the kindness shown me this day. Addio.”
“Addio, caro Forza.”
The man-servant who admitted Mario exclaimed in horror at sight of his bandaged head, and forgot for a time to hand him a letter inscribed “Urgent” that had arrived by the only post delivered in Milan that day. But he brought it in, with many excuses, at the moment that his master was about to seek the grateful repose of his own bed. It was the letter Tarsis had prepared the day before when he decided to exact payment of Forza—the writing forged in Hera’s hand, that should make simple the task of the Panther in collecting the bill:
CASTEL-MINORE, BRIANZA, TUESDAY.
MY BELOVED MARIO:
I have left Antonio Tarsis and returned to my father’s house. Of your counsel I have need. Come to the old monastery to-morrow (Wednesday) night at nine. Wait for me in the cloister. Yours, though all the world oppose,
HERA.
P.S.—Destroy this letter.
The effect was precisely what Tarsis counted upon when he made the midnight run in the motor car to Castel-Minore and dropped the letter into the post-office. Mario gave the sheet to a candle flame, destroying the only scrap that might be used against Tarsis should the Panther, by chance, bungle his work. Next he looked at the clock and saw that with a good horse there was time to reach the monastery at the hour. The new excitement brought back the heavy throbbing at his temples and sharper pain from the wound. He rang for the servant and astounded him by saying:
“I must go to the Brianza. There are no trains. Have Bruno saddled at once.”