A few of the curious among the gossips went to see the house the Princess had lately occupied, where she had “received” society and managed to shock it as well. It was shut up, and looked as if it had not been inhabited for years. And the gossips said it was “strange, very strange!” and confessed themselves utterly mystified. But the fact remained that Gervase had disappeared and the Princess Ziska with him. “However,” said Society, “they can’t possibly hide themselves for long. Two such remarkable personalities are bound to appear again somewhere. I daresay we shall come across them in Paris or on the Riviera. The world is much too small for the holding of a secret.”
And presently, with the approach of spring, and the gradual break-up of the Cairo “season,” Denzil Murray and his sister sailed from Alexandria en route for Venice. Dr. Dean accompanied them; so did the Fulkewards and Ross Courtney. The Chetwynd-Lyles went by a different steamer, “old” Lady Fulkeward being quite too much for the patience of those sweet but still unengaged “girls” Muriel and Dolly. One night when the great ship was speeding swiftly over a calm sea, and Denzil, lost in sorrowful meditation, was gazing out over the trackless ocean with pained and passionate eyes which could see nothing but the witching and exquisite beauty of the Princess Ziska, now possessed and enjoyed by Gervase, Dr. Dean touched him on the arm and said:
“Denzil, have you ever read Shakespeare?”
Denzil started and forced a smile.
“Why, yes, of course!”
“Then you know the lines —
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy?’
The Princess Ziska was one of those ‘things.’”
Denzil regarded him in wonderment.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, of course, you will think me insane,” said the Doctor, resignedly. “People always take refuge in thinking that those who tell them uncomfortable truths are lunatics. You’ve heard me talk of ghosts? — ghosts that walk and move about us like human beings? — and they are generally very brilliant and clever impersonations of humanity, too — and that nevertheless are NOT human?”
Denzil assented.
“The Princess Ziska was a ghost!” concluded the Doctor, folding his arms very tightly across his chest and nodding defiantly.
“Nonsense!” cried Denzil. “You are mad!”
“Precisely the remark I thought you would make!” and Dr. Dean unfolded his arms again and smiled triumphantly. “Therefore, my dear boy, let us for the future avoid this subject. I know what I know; I can distinguish phantoms from reality, and I am not deceived by appearances. But the world prefers ignorance to knowledge, and even so let it be. Next time I meet a ghost I’ll keep my own counsel!” He paused a moment, — then added: “You remember I told you I was hunting down that warrior of old time, Araxes?”
Denzil nodded, a trifle impatiently.
“Well,” resumed the Doctor slowly,— “Before we left Egypt I found him!
But how I found him, and where, is my secret!”
Society still speaks occasionally of Armand Gervase, and wonders in its feeble way when he will be “tired” of the Egyptian beauty he ran away with, or she of him. Society never thinks very far or cares very much for anything long, but it does certainly expect to see the once famous French artist “turn up” suddenly, either in his old quarters in Paris, or in one or the other of the fashionable resorts of the Riviera. That he should be dead has never occurred to anyone, except perhaps Dr. Maxwell Dean. But Dr. Dean has grown extremely reticent — almost surly; and never answers any questions concerning his Scientific Theory of Ghosts, a work which, when published, created a great deal of excitement, owing to its singularity and novelty of treatment. There was the usual “hee-hawing” from the donkeys in the literary pasture, who fondly imagined their brayings deserved to be considered in the light of serious opinion; — and then after a while the book fell into the hands of scientists only, — men who are beginning to understand the discretion of silence, and to hold their tongues as closely as the Egyptian priests of old did, aware that the great majority of men are never ripe for knowledge. Quite lately Dr. Dean attended two weddings, — one being that of “old” Lady Fulkeward, who has married a very pretty young fellow of five-and-twenty, whose dearest consideration in life is the shape of his shirt-collar; the other, that of Denzil Murray, who has wedded the perfectly well-born, well-bred and virtuous, if somewhat cold-blooded, daughter of his next-door neighbor in the Highlands. Concerning his Egyptian experience he never speaks, — he lives the ordinary life of the Scottish land-owner, looking after his tenantry, considering the crops, preserving the game, and clearing fallen timber; — and if the glowing face of the beautiful Ziska ever floats before his memory, it is only in a vague dream from which he quickly rouses himself with a troubled sigh. His sister Helen has never married. Lord Fulkeward proposed to her but was gently rejected, whereupon the disconsolate young nobleman took a journey to the States and married the daughter of a millionaire oil-merchant instead. Sir Chetwynd Lyle and his pig-faced spouse still thrive and grow fat on the proceeds of the Daily Dial, and there is faint hope that one of their “girls” will wed an aspiring journalist, — a bold adventurer who wants “a share in the paper” somehow, even if he has to marry Muriel or Dolly in order to get it. Ross Courtney is the only man of the party once assembled at the Gezireh Palace Hotel who still goes to Cairo every winter, fascinated thither by an annually recurring dim notion that he may “discover traces” of the lost Armand Gervase and the Princess Ziska. And he frequently accompanies the numerous sight-seers who season after season drive from Cairo to the Pyramids, and take pleasure in staring at the Sphinx with all the impertinence common to pigmies when contemplating greatness. But more riddles than that of the Sphinx are lost in the depths of the sandy desert; and more unsolved problems lie in the recesses of the past than even the restless and inquiring spirit of modern times will ever discover; — and if it should ever chance that in days to come, the secret of the movable floor of the Great Pyramid should be found, and the lost treasures of Egypt brought to light, there will probably be much discussion and marvel concerning the Golden Tomb of Araxes. For the hieroglyphs on the jewelled sarcophagus speak of him thus and say: —
“Araxes was a Man of Might, far exceeding in Strength and Beauty the common sons of men. Great in War, Invincible in Love, he did Excel in Deeds of Courage and of Conquest, — and for whatsoever Sins he did in the secret Weakness of humanity commit, the Gods must judge him. But in all that may befit a Warrior, Amenhotep The King doth give him honor, — and to the Spirits of Darkness and of Light his Soul is here commended to its Rest.”
Thus much of the fierce dead hero of old time, — but of the mouldering corpse that lies on the golden floor of the same tomb, its skeleton hand touching, almost grasping, the sword of Araxes, what shall be said? Nothing — since the Old and the New, the Past and the Present, are but as one moment in the countings of eternity, and even with a late repentance Love pardons all.
FINIS.
Boy
Boy was the second of two novels published after Corelli recovered from personal traumas – firstly, a serious illness that required surgery (a risky undertaking in the late Victorian era) and secondly, the death of Eric Mackay, her half brother and an omnipresent, if problematic feature of her adult life up to that point. The first of the two works published in 1900 was The Master Christian; both were instant best sellers. Boy is an expansion of a previously written short story. Coates and Bell describe this story as “a sermon to parents” and Punch magazine, having finally found a work by Corelli they thought worthy of praise, described the story as “a work of genius” and predicted that it would become an English classic. However, present day scholars have suggested the book had an “easy ride” critically due to the extreme sentimentality with which late Victorians were prone to view children. The book is one of several that Corelli dedicated to her “companion” of forty ye
ars, Bertha Vyver, “my dearest friend in the world”. At this point in her career, Corelli was commanding publisher’s advances of at least £7,000, with royalties on top of that from her healthy book sales. The novel was published in America by Lippincott, in 1901 and by Hutchinson in Britain, in 1900.
Boy has had a disjointed upbringing. His mother is described as slipshod and lazy, a “lymphatic lump of a woman”, who is more interested in taking the easy path with her son than raising a man from the boy. He is given sloppy food that does not agree with him, dosed with patent medicines and has to suffer the sight of his mother slopping around the house in loose clothing (presumably even lacking a corset!) and reading novels for most of the day. His father, Captain D’Arcy Muir, is a bellicose fellow that drinks too much and then lets out his frustrations by breaking ornaments and small pieces of furniture – but is less destructive if Boy is tied to a chair in the same room as he, as he cannot stand the sound of Boy crying in fear (because it is irritating, not because he fears upsetting his son).
Thankfully, Boy has a refuge — the almost saintly Miss Letitia Leslie, a spinster whose beau died in India many years before; and her would-be suitor, Major Desmond, who is a frequent visitor. They are the parent figures Boy should really have had on a full time basis, offering stability and unconditional love in a pleasant and tranquil home. However, it is not to last. Boy’s family move to the coast as an economy measure and time and geographical distance keep Boy from Letitia and the Major; away from London, his education suffers and he becomes bored and intellectually stagnant. He is now nine years old and gloomily aware of the shortcomings of his parents; in fact, they both appal and disgust him. He starts to mix with the “common boys of the village” and eventually looks and speaks like “a sea ragamuffin”. Soon, Boy’s father decides to send him to a boarding school in France. The Major warns Letitia “a cheap foreign school is the last straw on the camel’s back. Whatever is good in his nature will go to waste; whatever is bad will grow and flourish!” Feeling that her beloved “foster child” has been snatched away from her, Letitia agrees to travel to America with the Major to help him with his orphaned niece, Violet.
The story now moves forward and Boy is sixteen years old. Academically he is a success, but has become a rather self centred young man, indifferent to what is going on around him and is preparing for officer training at Sandhurst. Boy has a rather awkward reunion with Letitia, who is back in England at the time and his future life seems assured when he begins his training at the prestigious military establishment. However, despite every effort in the past on the part of those that truly love him — in particular, Letitia and the Major — Boy arrives at Sandhurst not only with his real luggage, but with his emotional baggage intact and it is now that his real problems will begin.
Although this is one of Corelli’s best selling books, perhaps because of the themes of childhood, true Christian love and redemption, it feels rather slow to the modern reader compared to other books in her oeuvre. Nevertheless, for anyone wishing to analyse the preferences of the contemporary enthusiast of Corelli, it provides ample evidence of that profile and is not an unpleasant read.
The first edition
The first edition’s title page
CONTENTS
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 original frontispiece
TO MY DEAREST FRIEND IN THE WORLD
BERTHA VVVER
WHO HAS KNOWN ALL MY LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD AND HAS BEEN THE WITNESS OF MY WORK FROM THE BEGINNING THIS SIMPLE STORY IS GRATEFULLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED
CHAPTER I.
IT is said by many people who are supposed to “know things” that our life is frequently, if not always, influenced by the first impressions we ourselves receive of its value or worthlesness. Some folks, assuming to be wiser even than the wisest, go so far as to affirm that if you, while still an infant in long clothes, happen to take a disgust to the manner and customs of your parents, you will inevitably be disgusted at most events and persons throughout the remainder of your earthly pilgrimage. If any truth exists in such a statement, then “Boy” had excellent cause to be profoundly disappointed in his prospects at a very early outset of his career. He sat in what is sometimes called a “feeding-chair,” wedged in by a bar which guarded him from falling forward or tumbling out upon the floor, and the said bar was provided with an ingenious piece of wood, which was partially hollowed out in such wise as to keep him firm by his fat waist, as well as to provide a resting place for the plateful of ‘bread-and-milk which he was enjoying as much as circumstances would permit him to enjoy anything. Every now and then he beat the plate solemnly with his spoon, as though improvising a barbaric melody on a new sort of torn-torn, and, lifting a pair of large, angelic blue eyes upward, till their limpid light seemed to meet and mix with the gold-glint of his tangled curls, he murmured, pathetically, —
“Oh, Poo Sing! Does ‘oo feels ill? Does ‘oo feels bad? Oh, Poo Sing!”
Now “Poo Sing” was not a Japanese toy, or a doll, or a bird, or any innocent object of a kind to attract a three-year-old child’s fancy; “Poo Sing” was nothing but a Man, and a disreputable creature even at that. “Poo Sing” was Boy’s father, and “Poo Sing” was for the moment — to put it quite mildly — blind drunk. “Poo Sing” had taken his coat and waistcoat off, and had pulled out the ends of his shirt in a graceful white festoon all round the waistband of his trousers. “Poo Sing” had also apparently done some hard combing to his hair, for the bulk of it stood somewhat up on end, and a few grizzled and wiry locks strayed in disorderly fashion across his inflamed nose and puffy eyelids, this effect emphasising the already halffoolish, half-infuriated expression of his face. “Poo Sing” staggered to and fro, his heavy body scarcely seeming to belong to his uncertain legs, and between sundry attacks of hiccough he trolled out scraps of song, now high, now low, sometimes in a quavering falsetto, sometimes in a threatening bass; while Boy listened to him wonderingly, and regarded his divers antics over the bar of the “feeding-chair” with serious compassion, the dulcet murmur of “Does ‘oo feels bad, Poo Sing!” recurring at intervals between mouthfuls of bread-and-milk and the rhythmic beat of the spoon. They were a strangely assorted couple, — Boy and “Poo Sing,” — albeit they were father and son. Boy, with his fair, round visage and bright halo of hair, looked more like a child-angel than a mortal, and “Poo Sing,” in his then condition, resembled no known beast upon earth, since no beast ever gets voluntarily drunk save Man. Yet it must not for a moment be imagined that “Poo Sing” was not a gentleman. He was a gentleman, — most distinctly, most emphatically. He would have told you so himself, had you presumed to doubt it, with any amount of oaths to emphasise the fact. He would have spluttered at you somewhat in the following terms, —
“My father was a gentleman, — and my grandfather was a gentleman, — and my great grandfather was a gentleman, — and, d — n you, sir, our people were all gentlemen, every sanguinary man-jack of them, back to the twelfth century! No tommy-rot with me! None of your mean, skulking, money-grubbing Yankee millionaires in our lot! Why, you d — d-rascal! Call me a gentleman! — I should pretty much think so! I am a D’Arcy-Muir, — and I have the blood of kings in my veins, — d — n you!”
Gentleman! I should think he was a gentleman! His language proved it! And his language was the first lesson in English that Boy received, though he was not aware of its full significance. So that when, two or three years later on, Boy cried out “D — n rascal papa!” quite suddenly and vociferously, he had no consciousness of saying anything that was not the height of filial tenderness and politeness. To be a D’Arcy-Muir meant to be the descendant of a long line of knights and noblemen
who had once upon a time possessed huge castles with deep dungeons, where serfs and close kindred could be conveniently imprisoned and murdered at leisure without distinction as to character or quality; — knights and noblemen who some generations onward were transformed into “six-bottle men” who thought it seemly to roll under their dining-tables dead drunk every evening, and who, having merged themselves and their “blue blood” into this present nineteenth-century Captain the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir, the father of Boy, were, we must suppose, in their condition of departed spirits, perfectly satisfied that they had bestowed a blessing upon the world by the careful production of such a “gentleman” and Christian.
Captain the Honourable, mindful of his race and breeding, took care to marry a lady whose ancestry was only just in a slight degree lower than his own. She could not trace her lineage back to the twelfth century, still, she came of what is sometimes called a good old stock, and she was handsome enough as a girl, though always large, lazy, and unintelligent. Indolence was her chief characteristic, — she hated any sort of trouble. She only washed herself under protest, as a sort of concession to the civilisation of the day. She had been gifted with an abundance of beautiful hair, of a somewhat coarse texture, yet rich in colour and naturally curly, — it was “a nuisance,” she averred, — and as soon as she married she cut it short, “to save the bother of doing it in the morning,” as she herself stated. Until she had secured a husband, she had complied sufficiently with the rules of society to keep herself tidily dressed; but both before and after her boy was born she easily relapsed into the slovenly condition which she considered “comfort,” and which was her habitual nature. Truth to tell, she had no incentive or ambition to appear at her best. She had not been married to Captain the Honourable D’Arcy-Muir one week before she discovered his partiality for strong drink, and being far too lymphatic to urge resistance, she sank into a state of passive resignation to circumstances. What was the good of a pretty toilette”? — her husband never noticed how she dressed; whether she wore satin or sackcloth was a matter of equal indifference to him; so, finding that a short skirt and loose-fitting blouse formed a comfortable sort of “get-about” costume she adopted it, and stuck to it morning, noon, and night. Always inclined to embonpoint, she managed to get positively stout in a very short time; and chancing to read in a journal an article on “hygiene” which eloquently proved that corsets were harmful and really dangerous to health, she decided to do without them. So that by the time Boy was three years old, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, in her continual study of personal ease, had developed a loose, floppy sort of figure, which the easy-fitting blouse covered but did not disguise; to save all possibility of corns she encased her somewhat large feet in soft felt slippers, swept the short hair from off her brows, did without collars and cuffs, and “managed” her small house in Hereford Square in her own fashion, which “managing” meant having everything at sixes and sevens, meals served at all hours, and a general preparation for the gradual destruction of Boy’s digestion by giving him his bread-and-milk and other nourishment at moments when he least expected it.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 429
