Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  “I have told you already” — responded Lionel, somewhat wearily— “I was tired.”

  “Tired of what?”

  “Of books and everything in them. They are very puzzling, you know, — no two writers agree on any one point — no two histories are alike — it is all quarrel, quarrel, muddle, muddle. And what’s the good of it all? You die, and you forget everything you ever knew. So your trouble’s wasted and your knowledge useless.”

  “Little fool! You have to live first before you die, and knowledge of books is necessary to life,” — said Valliscourt, harshly.

  “You think so? Ah! — well, I haven’t quite made up my mind about that,” — answered the boy with a quaintly reflective air— “I must consider it carefully before I decide. Good-night father.”

  Mr. Valliscourt gave no reply. Striding out of the room he banged the door angrily, and locked it behind him. Lionel remained by the window, looking straight into the golden glare of the west. He was not at all unhappy, — he had had one day of joyous and ever-memorable freedom, — and that this lonely room should be the end of it did not seem to him much of a hardship. He was not afraid of either solitude or darkness, — it was better to be alone thus, than to have to endure the presence of the gaunt and unwholesome looking object downstairs, who was reputed by a certain ‘set’ to be one of the wisest men in the world. A pity that wisdom made a person so ugly! — thought Lionel, as he recalled one by one the Professor’s unattractive lineaments. What lantern-jaws he had! — what cold, cruel little ferret eyes! — what an unkind slit for a mouth! — and how very different was his crafty, artificially-composed demeanour to the open and sincere bearing of Reuben Dale!

  “Reuben Dale could teach me a lot, I know;” — mused the boy— “He doesn’t read Greek or Latin I suppose, — but I’m sure he could help me to find out something about life, and that’s what I want. I want to understand what it means, — life, — and death.”

  He lifted his eyes to the radiant sky, and saw two long shafts of luminous amber spring outward and upward from the sinking sun like great golden leaves, between which the orb of light blossomed red like a fiery rose in heaven.

  “I wish there were angels, really,” — he said half aloud— “One would almost think there must be, and that all that splendid colour was put into the sky just to show us what their beautiful wings are like. Little Jessamine Dale believes in angels, — I should like to believe in them too, — if I could.”

  His gaze wandered slowly down from the sunset, to the shrubs and trees of the garden below him, and presently he saw among the darkening shadows two figures moving leisurely up and down. One was his mother, — he recognised her by the white serge dress she wore, — the other was a man whose personality he was not at first quite sure of, but whom he afterwards made out to be Sir Charles Lascelles.

  “I suppose he’s come to dinner;” — thought Lionel— “I remember now, — Mr. Montrose mentioned that he was staying quite near here at Watermouth Castle. I wonder why I don’t like him?”

  He considered this for some time without clearing up the point satisfactorily, — then, before it grew quite dark, he took out Montrose’s copy of Homer from under his blue jersey vest where he had secreted it, out of his father’s sight, and put it carefully by in readiness to post to its rightful owner next day, smiling a little to himself as he thought of Jessamine’s odd pronunciation of the ‘Drojunwors.’ This done, he resumed his seat by the window, and watched the skies and the landscape till both grew dark, and the stars began to twinkle out dimly in the hazy purple distance. His little mind was always restless, and actively evolving ideas, — and though his immediate reflections dwelt for the most part on the pretty face and winsome ways of Jessamine Dale, they now and then took a more serious turn and strove to make something out of what appeared to him an ever-deepening problem and puzzle, — namely, — why should some people believe in a God, and others not? And why should so many of those who professed belief, live their lives in direct opposition to the very creed they assumed to follow? There must be adequate cause for all these phases of human nature. Did the world make itself? — or did it owe its origin to a reasoning and reasonable Creator? — and not only the world, but all the vast universe, — the thousands of millions of glorious and perfect star-systems which like flowers in a garden, bloomed in the pure ether, — what was the object of their existence, if any, and why was it decided that they should exist, and WHO so decided it? Deep in the child’s brain the eternal question burned, — the eternal defiance which always asserts itself when there is neither faith nor hope, — the suicidal scorn which disdains and upbraids a Force that can give no reason for its actions, and which refuses to act in blind obedience to the cross-currents of a fate that leads to Nothingness. “If you can offer me no worthy explanation of my existence, and I can supply none for myself,” — says the tortured and suffering soul,— “then not all the elements shall hinder me from putting an end to that existence if I please. This much I can do, — if you give me no satisfactory motive for my hold on life I can cease to live, and thus are your arguments confuted and your surface-knowledge made vain.”

  The seed of this spiritual rebellion was in Lionel’s mind though he knew it not, — it had been sown there by others, and was not of his own planting, nor the natural out-put of his being. His unceasing query as to the ‘why’ of things, had never been answered by the majestic reason known to those whose faith is raised upon high pinnacles of thought and aspiration, — and who hold it as a truth that their lives are lived by God’s will and ordinance in the school of temporal beginnings as a preparation for eternal fulfilment. This supreme support and hope had not been given to the boy’s frail life to raise it like a drooping flower from the dust of material forms and facts, — he had been carefully instructed in all the necessary sciences for becoming a man of hard calculation and cool business-aptitude, — but his imagination had been promptly checked, — he had never even been taught a prayer, although he had been told that there were people who prayed, — in churches and elsewhere. When he propounded the usual ‘why?’ he was informed that the fashion of praying was the remains of old superstition, followed now out of mere ordinary usage, because the ‘masses’ of the people were not yet sufficiently educated to do entirely without the observances to which they had for so many centuries been accustomed, — but that it was only a matter of foolish habit. And then his teachers pointed out to him that the laws of the universe being inflexible, it was ridiculous to suppose that prayer could alter them, or that the deaf, blind, dumb forces of nature could possibly note a human being’s trouble, or listen to a human being’s complaint, much less accede to a human being’s request, — for human beings, compared with the extent of Creation generally, were no more than motes in a sunbeam, or ants on an ant-hill. Hearing this, and quickly grasping the idea of man’s infinite littleness, Lionel at once set about asking the cause of man’s evident arrogance. If he was indeed so minute a portion of the creative plan, and so valueless to its progress, why was he so concerned about himself? If he were but a mote or an ant, what did it matter whether he were learned or ignorant? — and did it not seem somewhat of a cruel jest to fill him with such pride, aspiration and endeavour, when according to scientific fact, he was but a grain of worthless and perishable dust? To all these serious questions, the small searcher after truth never got any satisfactory replies. Montrose indeed had told him with much emphasis, that man possessed an immortal Soul, — a conscious, individual, progressive Self which could not die, — which took part in all the designs of God, and which, filled with the divine breath of inspiration and desire of holiness, was borne on through infinite phases of wisdom, love and glory for ever and ever, always in- increasing creasing in beauty, strength, love, and purity. Such a destiny, thought Lionel, would have made one’s present life worth living, if true. But then, according to modern scientists, it wasn’t true, and Montrose was a poor ‘semi-barbarian’ who still believed in God, and who
had got his dismissal from his post as tutor, chiefly on that account.

  “I wonder,” mused Lionel, “what it is that makes him believe? It can’t be stupidity, for he is very clever and kind and good. I wish I knew exactly why he thinks there is a God, — and Reuben Dale too, — he has just the same idea, — only when I ask, no one seems able to give me any clear explanation of what they feel.”

  Darker and darker grew the evening shadows, — but still he sat at the window, solemnly considering the deep problems of life and time, and never thought of going to bed. Soon a misty white glory arose out of the gathering blackness, — the moon, pallid yet brilliant, lifted her strangely sorrowful face over the plumy tree-tops and cast a silvery reflection on the grass below. It was a mournful, almost spectral night, — a faint bluish haze of heat hung in the stirless air, — dew sparkled thickly in patches upon the distant fields with a smooth sheen as of shining swamps, or suddenly risen pools, — and in the furthest thickets of the garden, a belated nightingale who ought by laws ornithological, to have hushed his voice more than a month since, sang drowsily and as if in a dream, without passion, yet with something of pain. Lionel heard the faint, throbbing fluty notes afar off, and would have liked to open the window to listen more attentively, but as his father had shut and fastened it, he decided to leave it so; — and presently, what with watching the moon and the lengthening ghostly shadows, and thinking and wondering, he fell fast asleep in his chair, his head leaning against the wall. For a long time he remained thus, dreaming odd disjointed dreams, in which the various facts he had learned of history got mixed up with little Jessamine Dale and the ‘ole ‘oss,’ the latter object becoming in his visions suddenly endowed with life, and worthy to bear a Cœur de Lion to the field of battle. All at once he was startled into broad wakefulness by a voice calling softly, yet clearly, —

  “Lionel! Lionel!”

  He jumped up, and to his amazement saw the stalwart figure of Sir Charles Lascelles comfortably perched on a branch of the big elm-tree that grew just outside his window. The baronet had a package in his hand, and with it made signs of peremptory yet mysterious meaning. Not knowing what to think of this strange proceeding, the boy noiselessly unfastened and raised the window.

  “Oh, there you are, little chappie!” said Sir Charles, showing his white teeth in a pleasant smile, and swinging himself further along the branch in order to approach the window more nearly— “Look here, — your mother sends you this — catch!” and he dexterously threw the packet he held straight into the room, where it fell on the floor,— “Sandwiches, cake and pears, my boy! — eat ’em all and go to bed. The old man’s been boasting of his cleverness in starving you, — he’s shut himself up now with that blessed ass of a Professor, so he won’t know anything about it, — and your mother says you’re to eat every morsel, to please her. Ta-ta!”

  Lionel thrust his little pale eager face out of the window.

  “Oh, please, Sir Charles!” he called faintly after the retreating baronet. Lascelles looked back.

  “Well?”

  “Give mother my love, — my dear love! — and thank her for me.”

  Sir Charles turned his face upward in the silver shimmer of the moon. There was a curious expression upon it, of shame, mingled with tenderness and remorse.

  “All right, my boy, — I will! Good-night!”

  “Good-night!” responded Lionel. And he stood at the open window for a minute or two, inhaling the night air, fragrant with the odour of flowers and the breath of the sea, — and marvelling at the athletic adroitness with which Sir Charles, who generally ‘posed’ as a languid and lazy man of fashion, slipped along the elm-branch, swung himself downward by both hands, dropped stealthily to the ground, and disappeared. No burglar could have been more secret or swift in his actions, or more sudden in his coming and going. Alone once more, the boy shut and fastened the window again with soft precaution, — then he felt along the floor for his mother’s package. He soon found and opened it, — there were plenty of good things inside, — and, spreading his repast on the window-sill with the moonbeams for light, he was surprised to find himself really hungry. He very seldom felt any decided relish for food, — and he did not realise that his one day’s free ‘outing’ in the Devonshire air, was the cause of his healthy appetite. To-morrow, and the next day, and the next, when he should resume his poring over books, and his patient if weary researches into ‘works of reference,’ he would find the old indifference, lassitude and nausea upon him again, — the lack of energy which deprived him not only of appetite, but even of joy in exercise, — which made a walk fatiguing, and a run impossible. But now his little moonlit feast seemed delightful, — and he was quite happy when, having finished the surreptitious meal, he undressed and slipped into bed. He was soon asleep, and the white moonrays streaming in at the uncurtained window fell slant-wise on his small classic face and ruffled curly hair. Some pleasing vision sweetened his rest, for he smiled, — that divine half-wondering, half-solemn smile which is never seen save on the lips of sleeping children, and the newly dead.

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE next morning Professor Cadman-Gore sat awaiting his pupil in what was called the ‘school-room,’ — the bare, uncurtained apartment in which Lionel had been puzzling over his books, when Willie Montrose had called him out from study to the fresh air and the salty scent of the sea. It was an old-fashioned room, with a very low ceiling which was crossed and recrossed by stout oak rafters, after the style common to Henry the Eighth’s period, and had evidently been formerly used as a storeroom both for linen and provisions, for all round the walls there were large oaken cupboards holding many broad shelves, and here and there among the rafters were yet to be seen great iron hooks, strong enough to support a pendant dried haunch of venison, or possibly a whole stag, antlers included. The Professor, being tall, found some of these hooks considerably in his way, — he had already knocked his bald pate rather smartly against one of them, which he had instantly turned upon, as though it were a sentient enemy, and endeavoured to wrench out of position. But the tough rusted iron resisted all his efforts, and he had only scratched his hands and wasted his time without gaining his object. Somewhat irritated at this trifling annoyance, — trifles always irritated him, — he seated himself in the most comfortable chair available, and looked out of the window which was a quaint and pretty lattice-work casement opening on two sides, in the French fashion. The lovely scent of sweet-briar assailed his nose and offended it, — the gardener was cutting the grass, and the dewy smell suggested hay-fever at once to his mind.

  “What a fool I was to consent to come to this out-of-the-way place!” he muttered ill-temperedly; “Considering the distance from town, and the discomfort of the surroundings, I ought to ask double fees. The man Valliscourt is a prig — thinks he knows something, and doesn’t know anything, — his wife is good-looking and has all the impudent self-assurance common to women of her type, — and the boy seems to be a little puny-faced ass. Talk of the quiet of the country! — ugh! — I was wakened up this morning by the incessant crowing of a cock, — what people buy such brutes of birds for, I don’t know, — then a wretched cow began lowing, — and as for the twittering of the birds, why it’s a positive pandemonium, — worse than a dozen knife-grinders at work. I’ll have all those creepers cut away that are climbing round my bedroom window, — they harbour insects as well as birds, and the sooner I get rid of both nuisances the better.”

  He blew his long nose violently, with a startlingly-tinted silk handkerchief of mingled red and yellow hues, — and the idea of hay-fever again recurring to him, he shut the window with a bang. Then he unfolded a large sheet of paper which Mr. Valliscourt had given him the previous night, and on which was written out in neatest copper-plate the “schedule” or plan of study Lionel had been following for the past six months. Over this document he knitted his yellow forehead, grinned and frowned, — as he read on, he blinked, sucked his tongue, and smacked his lips, and
twisted himself about in so many fidgety ways that he became a perfectly appalling spectacle of ugliness, and in his absorbed condition of mind was not aware that the door of the room had quietly opened, and as quietly closed again, and that Lionel stood confronting him, with a calmly speculative and critical stare. Two or three minutes passed silently in this way, — then Lionel spoke.

  “Good-morning, Professor!”

  The Professor started, and rapidly disentangled his long legs from the uncouth knot in which he had gathered them over the rung of the chair he occupied, — put down the ‘plan,’ — adjusted his round spectacles, and surveyed his pupil.

  “Good-morning, sir!” he responded drily— “I trust you have slept off your temper, and are prepared for work?”

  “I haven’t slept off my temper,” — said Lionel quietly, “because I had no temper to sleep off. Father knew that as well as I did. It’s always silly, I think, to accuse somebody else of being in a temper when you’re in one yourself. But that’s all over now, — that was yesterday, — this is to-day, and I am quite prepared for work.”

  “Glad to hear it!” and Professor Cadman-Gore smiled his usual pallid smile— “Have you had your breakfast?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you ‘rested’ sufficiently?” demanded the Professor with sarcastic emphasis.

  “I don’t know, — I don’t think so,” — the boy answered slowly— “I often feel I should like to go to sleep for days and days.”

  “Really!” and a prolonged sniff indicated the learned tutor’s deep disdain— “Possibly you are of the hybernating species?”

  “Possibly!” responded Lionel, with cynical calm— “A hybernating animal is a creature that goes to sleep all the winter. I shouldn’t mind that at all, — it would take off a lot of trouble from one’s life. Don’t you ever feel tired?”