Mr. Valliscourt grew white to the lips, — he breathed quickly as though he had been running a race, and for the moment he seemed to shrink and cower beneath the angry glance and fierce attitude of the irate Professor; — then, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, he said composedly,
“I am surprised, — really surprised, — to hear such violent language from you, Professor! Pray do not excite yourself! You have been very kind and patient with ... with my son, — and if it is at all a matter of importance and obligation to you that his last wishes should be complied with, I really have no very serious objection to carrying them out, — the more especially as they help to prove his utterly unsound state of mind. No well-born boy in such a station of life as that occupied by my son, would wish to be buried beside a common peasant, if he were not insane. Your accusation of ‘over-cramming’ is quite ridiculous, — excuse me for saying so! — it is impossible to over-cram a really strong brain, — and the younger the brain, the more vivid and lasting the impressions of knowledge. I naturally supposed my son’s brain was of a healthy and vigorous quality, and it is a decided shock to me to find I was mistaken. This affair will cause a great deal of talk and trouble, — I think I had better call on Dr. Hartley, and place matters in his hands for speedy arrangement. There will have to be an inquest, of course, — and these things are excessively tiresome.”
The Professor gazed at him reproachfully.
“Valliscourt,” he said, “you never loved your son! You could not have loved him, or you would not speak as you do now, in his dead presence!”
And he pointed to the couch where lay the passive little form, lulled into that perfect rest which no clash of tongues in wordy argument should ever again disturb.
Mr. Valliscourt’s glance followed his gesture, but not a quiver of emotion moved the composed coldness of his features.
“Love is a mere figure of speech,” — he said— “And it only applies to the temporary attraction we feel for a woman, or women. No reasonable father ‘loves’ his children, — his sole business is to look upon them as the results of the natural law of the reproduction of species, and as future citizens of the world, whom he is bound to train befittingly for their calling. Sentiment should have no share in their education, — that I believe, is your principle, or used to be, — it is certainly mine. I expected great things of my son, — but I see now how much I should have been disappointed in him. His brain was weak, possibly diseased, — and as a consequence of weakness or disease he has killed himself. It is very distressing of course, — but no doubt, as time wears on, I shall realise that it was the very best thing he could have done. I think I had better go at once to Dr. Hartley.”
He left the room with a firm, easy step and unruffled demeanour, — the materialistic ‘Positivist’ asserting itself in every line of his stiff figure as he went. And Professor Cadman-Gore, the ‘oracle’ of Universities, left alone with the dead Lionel, reverently approached the piteous little corpse, and there lost sight of himself and his various ‘theories’ in sorrowful contemplation. Studying the quiet, fair child-face intently, he murmured,
“The best thing you could have done! Well! — perhaps it is, poor boy! — perhaps it is! With such a father, — and such a mother, — aye, and such a teacher too! — for who knows whether I may not have done him harm? Who can tell whether I am right or wrong in my ideas of Deity? Can there be nothing higher than humanity? — the Valliscourt humanity, for instance? Heaven help us if that is all!”
And then, — considering that he was a learned pundit, supposed to be altogether devoid of sentiment, — he did a strange thing. Raising the dead boy in his arms, he kissed the cold brow just beneath the clustering curls, and said,
“Yes! — I will consider it, Lionel! I promise, for your sake, that when I have another boy to teach, I will consider whether it is not best and wisest to lead him up as far as a God of Love, — and leave him there!”
CHAPTER XVI.
ALL the little world of Combmartin turned out to attend Lionel’s funeral. His brief but tragic life-history, — his sorrow for his mother, — his despair at the death of his one day’s playmate, little Jessamine Dale, — and his determined suicide, were quickly rumoured through the village; and the sympathetic ‘touch of nature which makes the whole world kin,’ communicated itself from house to house, and from heart to heart, till every man, woman, and child in the place was moved by genuine pity and grief for the little fellow’s untimely end. The verdict on his death was the usual one, ‘Suicide during temporary insanity,’ — this judgment being always passed out of purest Christian charity, in order to allow the so desperately departed the rites of Christian burial. Dr. Hartley, who was present at the inquest, had no hesitation in asserting that he considered the boy had been driven to his rash act by over-study, which had caused extreme pressure on the brain, — and Professor Cadman-Gore manfully supported the statement, thus voluntarily taking a certain share of the blame on his own shoulders. Though, had the old scholar spoken all his mind, he would have added, that in his opinion, it was the nature of the education insisted upon, — namely, scientific positivism, and lack of all religious training, — which was the real cause of the wreckage of the boy’s young life. But he said nothing of this, though it may be he thought the more. And the morning came at last, when Reuben Dale, looking older by ten years, leaned on his spade by the little grave he had newly dug, next to that of his own beloved child, and watched the reverent crowd of his fellow-villagers as they gathered with hushed footsteps in the quiet old churchyard, and listened with tearful attention to the aged, white-haired parson who had known most of them all their lives, and whose clear voice, now and then faltering with emotion, pronounced the beautiful, triumphant words, —
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption, — it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory, — it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power, — It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body..... So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, — O Death, where is thy sting? 0 Grave, where is thy victory?”
With bent head and softened features, Professor Cadman-Gore listened, looking down into the square of earth wherein Lionel’s little coffin had been lowered, covered with flowers, the free-will offerings of the tender-hearted village women. A large wreath of honeysuckle from good Miss Payne was one of the most conspicuous and beautiful of the various garlands, she having stripped her entire cottage-porch of blossom for this purpose, — but even the poor afflicted ‘Hoddy-Doddy’ had brought a funeral token in the shape of a long branch of rare white roses fit for the adornment of a queen’s bower, — and Reuben Dale had dropped into the grave a single knot of jessamine, the smallest tribute of all, yet perhaps the sweetest and most significant. And the Professor was troubled by a rising lump in his throat, and a great mist before his eyes, as he heard, amid suppressed sobs from the little crowd, the parson’s tremulous accents, saying,
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto Himself the soul of our dear young brother departed,” — and the compassionate speaker hesitated as he put in with soft emphasis the word ‘young,’— “we therefore commit his body to the ground, — earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, — in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.”
Mr. Valliscourt listened with a frown of contempt on his features and anger in his heart. ‘The mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself!’ He resented this phrase, — it affronted him singularly. And he hated the situation in which he found himself, namely that of being compelled to give over the dead body of his son at last, to the rites of the Creed he abhorred. When at the ‘Our Father’
every one knelt down on the warm, daisy-sprinkled turf, he stood proudly erect, glancing disdainfully at the Professor, who though too stiff in the joints to kneel, nevertheless bowed his head out of respect for the sacredness of the ceremony. The service ended, the venerable clergyman dismissed all present with the usual blessing, pronounced with more than the usual fervency, and went his gentle tottering way with his assistants, leaving Reuben Dale to his appointed work of filling in the newly-made grave. The villagers moved away noiselessly, some crying, in company with Clarinda Payne, others endeavouring to comfort the girl Lucy, who wept as though her heart would break, and others again whispering strangely about Mr. Valliscourt’s cold and cruel looks, — while, huddled up in a corner at the churchyard gate sat the forlorn ‘Hoddy-Doddy,’ blubbering to himself and refusing to be comforted. “No — no!” he muttered vacantly in answer to one of the women who endeavoured to persuade him to accompany them,— “I’ll stay ’ere. Wi’ the children an’ the roses. All the roses, ... all the children, ... dead! — dead! I’ll stay ’ere, — summer’s over!”
Mr. Valliscourt remained in the churchyard till the little crowd had quite dispersed. Standing by his son’s grave he gazed fixedly down into it, saying nothing. Reuben Dale watched him in deep compassion for a moment, then he murmured gently,
“God comfort ye sir, on this sad day! He alone can help ye to bear sich a sore an’ bitter trouble!”
Mr. Valliscourt started irritably, — and turned to Professor Cadman-Gore.
“Does this fellow want an extra fee, beyond the ordinary charges?”
“Good God, no!” answered the Professor hastily, for he had taken the measure of Reuben’s proud and independent character, and hoped the tactless question had not been overheard.
Reuben, however, had caught its purport, — and he now looked steadily at Mr. Valliscourt, with a slight flush ‘on his brown cheeks.
“Ye mistake me, sir, altogether, I’m thinkin’,” he said, with a simple dignity which well became him,—”’Tis a matter o’ barely five days since I buried my own little ‘un here, wi’ my own hands, an’ my fool tears a-flowin’ on her coffin; an’ though you’re a gentleman born, an’ I’m onny a poor workin’ man, there’s summat of a tie atween us in the sorrow o’ our broken ‘arts. For our two childer played together just one summer’s day, an’ the last words that iver my Jess’mine said, wos ‘Give my love to Lylie.’ An’ the poor boy’s askin’ to be buried beside of her here in Combmartin, showed plain enough that he thought of her too, when he took to his death so willing like. The ways o’ God are not as our ways, sir, an’ there wos a heavenly link ‘tween they two little angel lives as we’re not able to see. That they be gone, an’ we be here, is better for them though worse fur us, — an’ knowin’ all the ache an’ trouble o’ the time, I made bold to say God comfort ye, without meanin’ no liberty nor offence, nor aught save just a word o’ sympathy from man to man.”
‘Sympathy from man to man!’ Mr. Valliscourt stared, in haughty wonder at the amazing impudence of this coarsely clad peasant, — this verger, sexton, road-mender and what not, — who dared to claim a brotherhood with him in sorrow!
“Thank you!” he said stiffly,— “You mean well, no doubt. Personally, I look upon the day that my unfortunate son played truant from his home, as the most ill-fated of his life. It is probable that had he not met your child, and afterwards taken her loss to heart, he might not have met with such an unnatural death. And I cannot admit of there being any ‘ways of God,’ in the matter, — I have no belief in a God at all.”
A shadow darkened Reuben’s fine face, but he answered quietly,
“Ay sir! is that so? Then I’m sorrier fur ye than iver! There’s no poor soul I pity more than a man as feels no God near ’im. Fur a grief strikes ye to the very core o’ the heart then, an’ there’s naught can heal the wound. God or no God, ye can’t do away wi’ trouble, — ye’ve lost a child!”
Mr. Valliscourt looked once more into the little open grave, — then at the sexton, — and a very slight ironical smile lifted the corners of his mouth and gleamed in his hard eyes.
“Losses can always be remedied,” he said coldly,— “And I shall marry again.”
With that he turned away, and walked steadily down the path leading to the churchyard gate, never once looking back.
But Professor Cadman-Gore lingered, — and after a little pause, impulsively lifted his old wide-awake hat from his bald pate with one hand, and silently held out the other to Reuben. Reuben, astonished at the action, hesitated a moment out of deference, — but looking at the Professor’s face and seeing tears in his old eyes, he understood, — and warmly grasped the scholar’s thin fingers in his own rough palm.
“I loved the little lad,” — said the Professor then, tremulously,— “I, who love nobody, learned to love him! You are a good man, and you have a heart, — I need not ask you to keep his grave as, — as it should be. His father will dismiss all memory of him from his mind, — it is his nature to forget the dead. But I should not like the poor child’s last resting-place to be neglected, — and if there is any cost I will gladly defray it—”
But here Reuben interrupted him.
“Cost, sir? Nay, there’ll be no cost but a few tears o’ mine, as mebbe will help the flowers grow! For he lies next to my Jess’mine ye see, sir, — there’s barely a two-inch distance ‘tween their little coffins; an’ as long as I live, an’ have hands to work wi’, so long will they two little graves be the sweetest an’ prettiest i’ the churchyard. All covered wi’ the blessed green turf, sir, an’ planted thick wi’ vi’lets an’ daisies, — an’ the cost o’ they things is onny just a little love an’ thoughtfulness.”
The Professor looked up, — then down; — finally he again offered his hand, and again Reuben shook it.
“Good-bye! God bless you!” he said.
“God bless you, sir!” responded Reuben.
And with another lingering glance of farewell down into Lionel’s grave where nothing could be seen but a pile of flowers, the learned Professor once more raised his hat to the untutored villager, and, reluctantly departing, went his lonely and reflective way.
Long before the shadows darkened, the church-yard was deserted and solitary, though in the church itself the organist was practising for the coming Sunday, and the sweet appealing notes of the beautiful hymn ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee,’ floated out through the ancient doorway, and soared, high up, into the calm air. Lionel’s grave was closed in, and a full-flowering stem of the white lilies of St. John lay upon it, like an angel’s sceptre. Another similar stem adorned the grave of Jessamine; and between the two little mounds of earth, beneath which two little innocent hearts were at rest for ever, a robin-redbreast sang its plaintive evening carol, while the sun flamed down into the west and the night fell.
THE END
The Murder of Delicia
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
The first edition
The first edition’s title page
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The following slight and unelaborated sketch of a very commonplace and everyday tragedy will, I am aware, meet with the unqualified disapproval of the ‘superior’ sex. They will assert, with much indignant emphasis, that the character of ‘Lord Carlyon’ is an impossible one, and that such a ‘cad’ as he is shown to be never existed. Anticipating these remarks, I have to say in reply that the two chief personages in my story, namely, ‘Lord Carlyon’ and his wife, are drawn strictly from the life; and, that though both the originals have some years since departed from this scene of earthly contest and misunderstanding, so that my delineation of thei
r characters can no longer grieve or offend either, the ‘murder of Delicia’ was consummated at the hands of her husband precisely in the way I have depicted it.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 393
