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

by Marie Corelli

  “So that, if one had leisure to watch the thing,” she mused, “one would know that when sixty fire-flashes have flown into air, one minute has passed. And I wonder what becomes of these glittering particles?”

  She knew well enough that they did not perish, but were only absorbed into another elemental organism. She had observed, too, that the movement of the whole machine, delicately balanced on its crystal pedestal, was sharp and emphatic when the sun was at the meridian, and more subdued though not less precise in the afternoon. She had very little opportunity, however, to continue a long watching of this inexplicable and apparently meaningless contrivance after mid-day, as then her hours of work were considered over and she was free to do as she liked. Sometimes she remained in her own apartments, practising her music, or reading, — and more often than not she went for a drive out into the open country with Madame Dimitrius in the light victoria and pair, which was a gift from Dimitrius to his mother, who could not be persuaded to drive in a motor-car. It was a charming turn-out, recognized in the neighbourhood as “the Doctor’s carriage” — for though Geneva and its environs are well supplied with many professors of medicine and surgery, Dimitrius seemed at this period to have gained a reputation apart from the rest as “the” doctor, par excellence. Once Diana asked him whether he had a large practice? He laughed.

  “None at all!” he replied. “I tell everybody that I have retired from the profession in order to devote all my time to scientific research — and this is true. But it does not stop people from sending for me at a critical moment when all other efforts to save a life have failed. And then of course I do my best.”

  “And are you always successful?” she went on.

  “Not always. How can I be? If I am sent for to rescue a man who has overfed and over-drunken himself from his youth onwards, and who, as a natural consequence, has not a single organ in his body free from disease, all my skill is of no avail — I cannot hinder him from toppling into the unconsciousness of the next embryo, where, it is to be hoped, he will lose his diseases with his fleshy particles. I can save a child’s life generally — and the lives of girls and women who have not been touched by man. The life-principle is very strong in these, — it has not been tampered with.”

  He closed the conversation abruptly, and she perceived that he had no inclination to talk of his own healing power or ability.

  After about a month or six weeks at the Château Fragonard, Diana began to feel very happy, — happier than she had ever been in her life. Though she sometimes thought of her parents, she knew perfectly that they were not people to grieve long about any calamity, — besides which, her “death” was not a calamity so far as they were concerned. They would call it such, for convention’s sake and in deference to social and civil observances — but “Ma” would console herself with a paid “companion housekeeper” — and if that companion-housekeeper chanced to be in the least good-looking or youthful, “Pa” would blossom out into such a juvenility of white and “fancy” waistcoats, and general conduct as frequently distinguishes elderly gentlemen who are loth to lose their reputation for gallantry. And Diana wasted no time in what would have been foolish regret, had she felt it, for her complete and fortunate severance from “home” which was only home to her because her duty made her consider it so. A great affection had sprung up between her and Madame Dimitrius; the handsome old lady was a most lovable personality, simple, pious, unaffected, and full of a devotion for her son which was as touching as it was warm and deep. She had absolute confidence in him, and never worried him by any inquisitiveness concerning the labours which kept him nearly all day away from her, shut up in his laboratory, which he alone had the secret of opening or closing. Hers was the absolute reliance of “the perfect love which casteth out fear;” all that he did was right and must be right in her eyes, — and when she saw how whole-heartedly and eagerly Diana threw herself into the tedious and difficult work he had put before her to do, she showed towards that hitherto lonely and unloved woman a tenderness and consideration to which for years she had been unaccustomed, Very naturally Diana responded to this kindness with impulsive warmth and gratitude, and took pleasure in performing little services, such as a daughter might do, for the sweet-natured and gentle lady whose friendship and sympathy she appreciated more and more each day. She loved to help her in little household duties, — to mend an occasional tiny hole in the fine old lace which Madame generally wore with her rich black silk gowns, — to see that her arm-chair and foot-stool were placed just as she liked them to be, — to wind the wool for her knitting, and to make her laugh with some quaint or witty story. Diana was an admirable raconteuse, and she had a wonderful memory, — moreover, her impressions of persons and things were tinged with the gaiety of a perceptive humour. Sometimes Dimitrius himself, returning from a walk or from a drive in his small open auto-car, would find the two sitting together by a cheerful log fire in the drawing-room, laughing and chatting like two children, Diana busy with her embroidery, her small, well-shaped, white hands moving swiftly and gracefully among the fine wools from which she worked her “Jacobean” designs, and his mother knitting comforts for the poor in preparation for the winter which was beginning to make itself felt in keen airs and gusts of snow. On one of these occasions he stood for some minutes on the threshold, looking at them as they sat, their backs turned towards him, so that they were not at once aware of his presence. Diana’s head, crowned with its bright twists of hair, was for the moment the chief object of his close attention, — he noted its compact shape, and the line of the nape of the heck which carried it — a singularly strong and perfect line, if judged by classic models. It denoted health and power, with something of pride, — and he studied it anatomically and physiologically with all the interest of a scholar. Suddenly she turned, and seeing him apparently waiting at the door, smiled a greeting.

  “Do you want me?” she asked.

  He advanced into the room.

  “Ought I to want you?” he counter-queried. “These are not working hours! If you were a British workman such an idea as my wanting you ‘out of time’ would never enter your head! As a British working woman, you should stipulate for the same privileges as a British working man.”

  He drew a chair to the fire, and as his mother looked at him with loving, welcoming eyes, he took her hand and kissed it.

  “Winter is at hand,” he continued, giving a stir with the poker to the blazing logs in the grate. “It is cold to-day — with the cold of the glaciers, and I hear that the snow blocks all the mountain passes. We are at the end of October — we must expect some bitter weather. But in Switzerland the cold is dry and bracing — it strengthens the nerves and muscles and improves the health. How do you stand a severe winter, Miss May?”

  “I have never thought about it,” she answered. “All seasons have beauty for me, and I have never suffered very much by either the cold or the heat. I think I have been more interested in other things.”

  He looked at her intently.

  “What other things?”

  She hesitated. A faint colour stole over her cheeks.

  “Well, — I hardly know how to express it — things of life and death. I have always been rather a suppressed sort of creature — with all my aims and wishes pent up, — pressed into a bottle, as it were, and corked tight!” She laughed, and went on. “Perhaps if the cork were drawn there might be an explosion! But, wrongly or rightly, I have judged myself as an atom of significance made insignificant by circumstances and environment, and I have longed to make my ‘significance,’ however small, distinct and clear, even though it were only a pin’s point of meaning. If I said this to ordinary people, they would probably exclaim ‘How dull!’ and laugh at me for such an idea—”

  “Of course! — dull people would laugh,” agreed Dimitrius. “People in the aggregate laugh at most things, except lack of money. That makes them cry — if not outwardly, then inwardly. But I do not laugh,™ for if you can forget heat and cold and
rough weather in the dream of seeking to discover your own significance and meaning in a universe where truly nothing exists without its set place and purpose, you are a woman of originality as well as intelligence. But that much of you I have already discovered.”

  She glanced at him brightly.

  “You are very kind!”

  “Now do you mean that seriously or ironically?” he queried, with a slight smile. “I am not really very kind — I consider myself very cruel to have kept you chained for more than a month to rolls of vellum inscribed with crabbed old Latin characters, illegible enough to bewilder the strongest eyes. But you have done exceedingly well, — and we have all three had time to know each other and to like each other, so that a harmony between us is established. Yes — you have done more than exceedingly well —— —”

  “I am glad you are pleased,” said Diana, simply, resting one hand on her embroidery frame and looking at him with somewhat tired, anxious eyes. “I was rather hoping to see you this evening, though it is, as you say, after working hours, for I wanted very much to tell you that the manuscript I am now deciphering seems to call for your own particular attention. I should prefer your reading it with me before I go further.”

  “You are very conscientious,” he said, fixing his eyes keenly upon her—” Is she not, mother mine? She is afraid she will learn something important and necessary to my work before I have a chance to study it for myself. Loyal Miss Diana!”

  Madame Dimitrius glanced wistfully from her son to Diana, and from Diana back to her son again.

  “Yes, she is loyal, Féodor! You have found a treasure in her,” she said—” I am sure of it. It seems a providence that she came to us.”

  “Is it not Shakespeare who says, ‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’?” he queried lightly. “How much more ‘special’ then is the coming of a Diana!”

  It was the first time he had used her Christian name without any ceremonious prefix in her presence, and she was conscious of a thrill of pleasure, for which she instantly reproached herself. “I have no business to care what or how he calls me,” she thought. “He’s my employer, — nothing more.”

  “Diana,” repeated Dimitrius, watching her narrowly from under his now half-shut eyelids. “Diana is a name fraught with beautiful associations — the divine huntress — the goddess of the moon! Diana, the fleet of foot — the lady of the silver how! What poets’ dreams, what delicate illusions, what lovely legends are clustered round the name!” She looked at him, half amused, half indifferent.

  “Yes, — it is a thousand pities I was ever given such a name,” she said. “If I were a Martha, a Deborah or a Sarah, it would suit me much better. But Diana! It suggests a beautiful young woman—”

  “You were young once!” he suggested, meaningly.

  “Ah, yes, once!” and she sighed. “Once is a long time ago!”

  “I never regret youth,” said Madame Dimitrius. “My age has been much happier and more peaceful. I would not go back to my young days.”

  “That is because you have fulfilled your particular destiny,” interposed her son, “You fell in love with my father — what happy times they must have been when the first glamour of attraction drew you both to one another! — you married him, — and I am the result! Dearest mother, there was nothing more for you to do, with your devoted and gentle nature! You became the wife of a clever man, — he died, having fulfilled his destiny in giving you — may I say so? — a clever son, — myself! What more can any woman ask of ordinary nature?”

  He laughed gaily, and putting his arm round his mother, fondled her as if she were a child.

  “Yes, beloved! — you have done all your duty!” he went on, “But you have sacrificed your own identity — :he thing that Miss Diana calls her ‘significance.’ You lost that willingly when you married — all women lose it when they marry and you have never quite found it again. But you will find it! The slow process of evolution will make of you a ‘fine spirit’ when the husk of material life is cast off for wider expansion.”

  As he spoke, Diana looked at mother and son with the odd sense of being an outside spectator of two entirely unconnected identities, — the one overpowering and shadowing the other, but wholly unrelated and more or less opposed in temperament. Madame Dimitrius was distinguished by an air of soft and placid dignity, made sympathetic by a delicate touch of lassitude indicative of age and a desire for repose, while Féodor Dimitrius himself gave the impression of a strong energy restrained and held within bounds as a spirited charger is reined and held in by his rider, and, above all, of a man aware of his own possibilities and full of set resolve to fulfil them.

  “Is that embroidery of a very pressing nature?” he suddenly said, then, with a smile, “or do you think you could spare a few moments away from it?”

  She at once put aside her frame and rose.

  “Did I not ask you when you came in if you wanted me?” she queried. “Somehow I was quite sure you did! You know I am always ready to serve you if I can.” He still had one arm round his mother, — but he raised his eyes and fixed them on Diana with an expression which was to her new and strange.

  “I know you are!” he said, slowly. “And I shall need your service in a difficulty — very soon! But not just now. I have only a few things to say which I think should not be put off till to-morrow We’ll go into the library and talk there.”

  He bent down and kissed his mother’s snowy and still luxuriant hair, adding for her benefit:

  “We shall not be long, dearest of women! Keep warm and cosy by the fire, and you will not care for the ‘significance’ of yourself so long as you are loved! That is all some women ask for, — love.”

  “Is it not enough?” said Diana, conscious of her own “asking” in that direction.

  “Enough? No! — not half or quarter enough! Not for some women or some men — they demand more than this (and they have a right to demand more) out of the infinite riches of the Universe. Love, — or what is generally accepted under that name, — is a mere temporary physical; attraction between lessens with time as it is bound to lessen because of the higher claims made on the soul, — a painful thing to realize! — but we must not shiver away from truth like a child shivering away from its first dip in the sea, or be afraid of it. Lovers forget lovers, friends forget friends, husbands forget wives and vice versa, — the closest ties are constantly severed—”

  “You are wrong, Féodor — we do not forget!” said Madame Dimitrius, with tender reproach in her accents. “I do not forget your father — he is dear to me as lover and husband still. And whether God shall please to send my soul to heaven or to hell, I could never forget my love for you!”

  “Beloved, I know! — I feel all you say — but you are an exception to the majority — and we will not talk personalities! I cannot” — here he laughed and kissed her hand again—” I cannot have my theories upset by a petite Maman!”

  He left the room then and Diana followed him. Once in the library he shut the door and locked it.

  “Now you spoke of something in your translations that seemed to call for my attention,” he said. “I am ready to hear what it is.”

  Diana went to the table desk where she habitually worked, and took up some pages of manuscript, neatly fastened together in readable form.

  “It is a curious subject,” she said. “In the Assyrian originals it seems to have been called ‘The problem of the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh, culminating in the Eighth.’ Whether the Latin rendering truly follows the ancient script, it is, of course, impossible to say, —— — but while deciphering the Latin, I came to the conclusion that the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh were named in the problem as ‘rays’ or ‘tones’ of light, and the proposed culmination of the Eighth—”

  “Stop!” exclaimed Dimitrius, in a strained, eager voice. “Give me your papers! — let me see!”

  She handed them to him at once, and he sat down to read, While he was thus occupied, her gaze constan
tly wandered to the small, scythe-like instrument mowing off the seconds in dots of flame as a mower sweeps off the heads of daisies in the grass. A curious crimson colour seemed to be diffused round the whole piece of mechanism, — an effect she had never noticed before, and then she remembered it was late in the afternoon and that the sun had set. The rosy light emanating from the instrument and deeply reflected in the crystal pedestal on which it was balanced, seemed like an after-glow from the sky, — but the actual grey twilight outside was too pronounced and cold to admit of such an explanation.

  Suddenly Dimitrius looked up.