Four graceful youths, clad in the Armenian costume, stood waiting silently round the table till all present were seated, and then they commenced the business of serving the viands, with swift and noiseless dexterity. As soon as the soup was handed round, tongues were loosened, and the Challoners, who had been gazing at everything in almost open-mouthed astonishment, began to relieve their feelings by warm expressions of unqualified admiration, in which Colonel and Mrs. Everard were not slow to join.
“I do say, and I will say, this beats all I’ve ever seen,” said good Mrs. Challoner, as she bent to examine the glittering vase of flowers near her plate.
“And this is real electric light? And is it perfectly harmless?”
Heliobas smilingly assured her of the safety of his table decorations. “Electricity,” he said, “though the most powerful of masters, is the most docile of slaves. It is capable of the smallest as well as of the greatest uses. It can give with equal certainty life or death; in fact, it is the key-note of creation.”
“Is that your theory, sir?” asked Colonel Everard.
“It is not only my theory,” answered Heliobas, “it is a truth, indisputable and unalterable, to those who have studied the mysteries of electric science.”
“And do you base all your medical treatment on this principle?” pursued the Colonel.
“Certainly. Your young friend here, who came to me from Cannes, looking as if she had but a few months to live, can bear witness to the efficacy of my method.”
Every eye was now turned upon me, and I looked up and laughed.
“Do you remember, Amy,” I said, addressing Mrs. Everard, “how you told me I looked like a sick nun at Cannes? What do I look like now?”
“You look as if you had never been ill in your life,” she replied.
“I was going to say,” remarked Mr. Challoner in his deliberate manner, “that you remind me very much of a small painting of Diana that I saw in the Louvre the other day. You have the same sort of elasticity in your movements, and the same bright healthy eyes.”
I bowed, still smiling. “I did not know you were such a flatterer, Mr. Challoner! Diana thanks you!”
The conversation now became general, and turned, among other subjects, upon the growing reputation of Raffaello Cellini.
“What surprises me in that young man,” said Colonel Everard, “is his colouring. It is simply marvellous. He was amiable enough to present me with a little landscape scene; and the effect of light upon it is so powerfully done that you would swear the sun was actually shining through it.”
The fine sensitive mouth of Heliobas curved in a somewhat sarcastic smile.
“Mere trickery, my dear sir — a piece of clap-trap,” he said lightly. “That is what would be said of such pictures — in England at least. And it WILL be said by many oracular, long-established newspapers, while Cellini lives. As soon as he is dead — ah! c’est autre chose! — he will then most probably be acknowledged the greatest master of the age. There may even be a Cellini ‘School of Colouring,’ where a select company of daubers will profess to know the secret that has died with him. It is the way of the world!”
Mr. Challoner’s rugged face showed signs of satisfaction, and his shrewd eyes twinkled.
“Right you are, sir!” he said, holding up his glass of wine. “I drink to you! Sir, I agree with you! I calculate there’s a good many worlds flying round in space, but a more ridiculous, feeble-minded, contrary sort of world than this one, I defy any archangel to find!”
Heliobas laughed, nodded, and after a slight pause resumed:
“It is astonishing to me that people do not see to what an infinite number of uses they could put the little re-discovery they have made of LUMINOUS PAINT. In that simple thing there is a secret, which as yet they do not guess — a wonderful, beautiful, scientific secret, which may perhaps take them a few hundred years to find out. In the meantime they have got hold of one end of the thread; they can make luminous paint, and with it they can paint light-houses, and, what is far more important — ships. Vessels in mid-ocean will have no more need of fog-signals and different-coloured lamps; their own coat of paint will be sufficient to light them safely on their way. Even rooms can be so painted as to be perfectly luminous at night. A friend of mine, residing in Italy, has a luminous ballroom, where the ceiling is decorated with a moon and stars in electric light. The effect is exceedingly lovely; and though people think a great deal of money must have been laid out upon it, it is perhaps the only great ballroom in Italy that has been really cheaply fitted up. But, as I said before, there is another secret behind the invention or discovery of luminous paint — a secret which, when once unveiled, will revolutionize all the schools of art in the world.”
“Do you know this secret?” asked Mrs. Challoner.
“Yes, madame — perfectly.”
“Then why don’t you disclose it for the benefit of everybody?” demanded Erne Challoner.
“Because, my dear young lady, no one would believe me if I did. The time is not yet ripe for it. The world must wait till its people are better educated.”
“Better educated!” exclaimed Mrs. Everard. “Why, there is nothing talked of nowadays but education and progress! The very children are wiser than their parents!”
“The children!” returned Heliobas, half inquiringly, half indignantly. “At the rate things are going, there will soon be no children left; they will all be tired little old men and women before they are in their teens. The very babes will be born old. Many of them are being brought up without any faith in God or religion; the result will be an increase of vice and crime. The purblind philosophers, miscalled wise men, who teach the children by the light of poor human reason only, and do away with faith in spiritual things, are bringing down upon the generations to come an unlooked-for and most terrific curse. Childhood, the happy, innocent, sweet, unthinking, almost angelic age, at which Nature would have us believe in fairies and all the delicate aerial fancies of poets, who are, after all, the only true sages — childhood, I say, is being gradually stamped out under the cruel iron heel of the Period — a period not of wisdom, health, or beauty, but one of drunken delirium, in which the world rushes feverishly along, its eyes fixed on one hard, glittering, stony-featured idol — Gold. Education! Is it education to teach the young that their chances of happiness depend on being richer than their neighbours? Yet that is what it all tends to. Get on! — be successful! Trample on others, but push forward yourself! Money, money! — let its chink be your music; let its yellow shine be fairer than the eyes of love or friendship! Let its piles accumulate and ever accumulate! There are beggars in the streets, but they are impostors! There is poverty in many places, but why seek to relieve it? Why lessen the sparkling heaps of gold by so much as a coin? Accumulate and ever accumulate! Live so, and then — die! And then — who knows what then?”
His voice had been full of ringing eloquence as he spoke, but at these last words it sank into a low, thrilling tone of solemnity and earnestness. We all looked at him, fascinated by his manner, and were silent.
Mr. Challoner was the first to break the impressive pause.
“I’m not a speaker, sir,” he observed slowly, “but I’ve got a good deal of feeling somewheres; and you’ll allow me to say that I feel your words — I think they’re right true. I’ve often wanted to say what you’ve said, but haven’t seen my way clear to it. Anyhow, I’ve had a very general impression about me that what we call Society has of late years been going, per express service, direct to the devil — if the ladies will excuse me for plain speaking. And as the journey is being taken by choice and free-will, I suppose there’s no hindrance or stoppage possible. Besides, it’s a downward line, and curiously free from obstructions.”
“Bravo, John!” exclaimed Mrs. Challoner. “You are actually corning out! I never heard you indulge in similes before.”
“Well, my dear,” returned her husband, somewhat gratified, “better late than never. A simile is a good thi
ng if it isn’t overcrowded. For instance, Mr. Swinburne’s similes are laid on too thick sometimes. There is a verse of his, which, with all my admiration for him, I never could quite fathom. It is where he earnestly desires to be as ‘Any leaf of any tree;’ or, failing that, he wouldn’t mind becoming ‘As bones under the deep, sharp sea.’ I tried hard to see the point of that, but couldn’t fix it.”
We all laughed. Zara, I thought, was especially merry, and looked her loveliest. She made an excellent hostess, and exerted herself to the utmost to charm — an effort in which she easily succeeded.
The shadow on the face of her brother had not disappeared, and once or twice I noticed that Father Paul looked at him with a certain kindly anxiety.
The dinner approached its end. The dessert, with its luxurious dishes of rare fruit, such as peaches, plantains, hothouse grapes, and even strawberries, was served, and with it a delicious, sparkling, topaz-tinted wine of Eastern origin called Krula, which was poured out to us in Venetian glass goblets, wherein lay diamond-like lumps of ice. The air was so exceedingly oppressive that evening that we found this beverage most refreshing. When Zara’s goblet was filled, she held it up smiling, and said:
“I have a toast to propose.”
“Hear, hear!” murmured the gentlemen, Heliobas excepted.
“To our next merry meeting!” and as she said this she kissed the rim of the cup, and made a sign as though wafting it towards her brother.
He started as if from a reverie, seized his glass, and drained off its contents to the last drop.
Everyone responded with heartiness to Zara’s toast and then Colonel Everard proposed the health of the fair hostess, which was drunk with enthusiasm.
After this Zara gave the signal, and all the ladies rose to adjourn to the drawing-room. As I passed Heliobas on my way out, he looked so sombre and almost threatening of aspect, that I ventured to whisper:
“Remember Azul!”
“She has forgotten ME!” he muttered.
“Never — never!” I said earnestly. “Oh, Heliobas! what is wrong with you?”
He made no answer, and there was no opportunity to say more, as I had to follow Zara. But I felt very anxious, though I scarcely knew why, and I lingered at the door and glanced back at him. As I did so, a low, rumbling sound, like chariot-wheels rolling afar off, broke suddenly on our ears.
“Thunder,” remarked Mr. Challoner quietly. “I thought we should have it. It has been unnaturally warm all day. A good storm will clear the air.”
In my brief backward look at Heliobas, I noted that when that far-distant thunder sounded, he grew very pale. Why? He was certainly not one to have any dread of a storm — he was absolutely destitute of fear. I went into the drawing-room with a hesitating step — my instincts were all awake and beginning to warn me, and I murmured softly a prayer to that strong, invisible majestic spirit which I knew must be near me — my guardian Angel. I was answered instantly — my foreboding grew into a positive certainty that some danger menaced Heliobas, and that if I desired to be his friend, I must be prepared for an emergency. Receiving this, as all such impressions should be received, as a direct message sent me for my guidance, I grew calmer, and braced up my energies to oppose SOMETHING, though I knew not what.
Zara was showing her lady-visitors a large album of Italian photographs, and explaining them as she turned the leaves. As I entered the room, she said eagerly to me:
“Play to us, dear! Something soft and plaintive. We all delight in your music, you know.”
“Did you hear the thunder just now?” I asked irrelevantly.
“It WAS thunder? I thought so!” said Mrs. Everard. “Oh, I do hope there is not going to be a storm! I am so afraid of a storm!”
“You are nervous?” questioned Zara kindly, as she engaged her attention with some very fine specimens among the photographs, consisting of views from Venice.
“Well, I suppose I am,” returned Amy, half laughing. “Yet I am plucky about most things, too. Still I don’t like to hear the elements quarrelling together — they are too much in earnest about it — and no person can pacify them.”
Zara smiled, and gently repeated her request to me for some music — a request in which Mrs. Challoner and her daughters eagerly joined. As I went to the piano I thought of Edgar Allan Poe’s exquisite poem:
“In Heaven a spirit doth dwell,
Whose heart-strings are a lute;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars, so legends tell,
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice — all mute.”
As I poised my fingers above the keys of the instrument, another long, low, ominous roll of thunder swept up from the distance and made the room tremble.
“Play — play, for goodness’ sake!” exclaimed Mrs. Everard; “and then we shall not be obliged to fix our attention on the approaching storm!”
I played a few soft opening arpeggio passages, while Zara seated herself in an easy-chair near the window, and the other ladies arranged themselves on sofas and ottomans to their satisfaction. The room was exceedingly close: and the scent of the flowers that were placed about in profusion was almost too sweet and overpowering.
“And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre,
By which lie sits and sings, —
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.”
How these verses haunted me! With them floating in my mind, I played — losing myself in mazes of melody, and travelling harmoniously in and out of the different keys with that sense of perfect joy known only to those who can improvise with ease, and catch the unwritten music of nature, which always appeals most strongly to emotions that are unspoilt by contact with the world, and which are quick to respond to what is purely instinctive art. I soon became thoroughly absorbed, and forgot that there were any persons present. In fancy I imagined myself again in view of the glory of the Electric Ring — again I seemed to behold the opaline radiance of the Central Sphere:
“Where Love’s a grown-up God,
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.”
By-and-by I found my fingers at the work of tenderly unravelling a little skein of major melody, as soft and childlike as the innocent babble of a small brooklet flowing under ferns. I followed this airy suggestion obediently, till it led me of itself to its fitting end, when I ceased playing. I was greeted by a little burst of applause, and looking up, saw that all the gentlemen had come in from the dining-room, and were standing near me. The stately figure of Heliobas was the most prominent in the group; he stood erect, one hand resting lightly on the framework of the piano, and his eyes met mine fixedly.
“You were inspired,” he said with a grave smile, addressing me; “you did not observe our entrance.”
I was about to reply, when a loud, appalling crash of thunder rattled above us, as if some huge building had suddenly fallen into ruins. It startled us all into silence for a moment, and we looked into each other’s faces with a certain degree of awe.
“That was a good one,” remarked Mr. Challoner. “There was nothing undecided about that clap. Its mind was made up.”
Zara suddenly rose from her seat, and drew aside the window-curtains.
“I wonder if it is raining,” she said.
Amy Everard uttered a little shriek of dismay.
“Oh, don’t open the blinds!” she exclaimed. “It is really dangerous!”
Heliobas glanced at her with a little sarcastic smile.
“Take a seat on the other side of the room, if you are alarmed, madame,” he said quietly, placing a chair in the position he suggested, which Amy accepted eagerly.
She would, I believe, have gladly taken refuge in the coal-cellar had he offered i
t. Zara, in the meantime, who had not heard Mrs. Everard’s exclamation of fear, had drawn up one of the blinds, and stood silently looking out upon the night. Instinctively we all joined her, with the exception of Amy, and looked out also. The skies were very dark; a faint moaning wind stirred the tops of the leafless trees; but there was no rain. A dry volcanic heat pervaded the atmosphere — in fact we all felt the air so stifling, that Heliobas threw open the window altogether, saying, as he did so:
“In a thunderstorm, it is safer to have the windows open than shut; besides, one cannot suffocate.”
A brilliant glare of light flashed suddenly upon our vision. The heavens seemed torn open from end to end, and a broad lake of pale blue fire lay quivering in the heart of the mountainous black clouds — for a second only. An on-rushing, ever-increasing, rattling roar of thunder ensued, that seemed to shake the very earth, and all was again darkness.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 24
