Читать книгу The Life Everlasting - Marie Corelli - Страница 8

I slept as soundly and peacefully as a child, and the next day started on my journey in the brightest of bright summer weather. A friend travelled with me—one of those amiable women to whom life is always pleasant because of the pleasantness in their own natures; she had taken a house for the season in Inverness-shire, and I had arranged to join her there when my trip with the Harlands was over, or rather, I should say, when they had grown weary of me and I of them. The latter chance was, thought my friend, whom I will call Francesca, most likely.

"There's no greater boredom,"—she declared—"than the society of an imaginative invalid. Such company will not be restful to you,—it will tire you out. Morton Harland himself may be really ill, as he says—I shouldn't wonder if he is, for he looks it!—but his daughter has nothing whatever the matter with her,—except nerves."

"Nerves are bad enough,"—I said.

"Nerves can be conquered,"—she answered, with a bright smile of wholesome conviction—"Nerves are generally—well!—just selfishness!"

There was some truth in this, but we did not argue the point further. We were too much engrossed with the interests of our journey north, and with the entertainment provided for us by our fellow-travellers. The train for Edinburgh and Glasgow was crowded with men of that particular social class who find grouse-shooting an intelligent way of using their brain and muscle, and gun-cases cumbered the ground in every corner. It wanted yet several days to the famous Twelfth of August, but the weather was so exceptionally fine and brilliant that the exodus from town had begun earlier than was actually necessary for the purposes of slaughter. Francesca and I studied the faces and figures of our companions with lively and unabated interest. We had a reserved compartment to ourselves, and from its secluded privacy we watched the restless pacing up and down in the adjacent corridor of sundry male creatures who seemed to have nothing whatever to think about but the day's newspaper, and nothing to do but smoke.

"I am sure," said Francesca, suddenly—"that in the beginning of creation we were all beasts and birds of prey, eating each other up and tearing each other to pieces. The love of prey is in us still."

"Not in you, surely?" I queried, with a smile.

"Oh, I am not talking or thinking of myself. I'm just—a woman. So are you—a woman—and something more, perhaps—something not like the rest of us." Here her kind eyes regarded me a trifle wistfully. "I can't quite make you out sometimes,—I wish I could! But—apart from you and me—look at a few of these men! One has just passed our window who has the exact physiognomy of a hawk,—cruel eyes and sharp nose like a voracious beak. Another I noticed a minute ago with a perfectly pig-like face,—he does not look rightly placed on two legs, his natural attitude is on four legs, grunting with his snout in the gutter!"

I laughed.

"You are a severe critic, Francesca!"

"Not I. I'm not criticising at all. But I can't help seeing resemblances. And sometimes they are quite appalling. Now you, for instance,"—here she laid a hand tentatively on mine—"you, in your mysterious ideas of religion, actually believe that persons who lead evil lives and encourage evil thoughts, descend the scale from which they have risen and go back to the lowest forms of life—"

"I do believe that certainly"—I answered—"But—"

"'But me no buts,'"—she interrupted—"I tell you there are people in this world whom I see IN THE VERY ACT OF DESCENDING! And it makes me grow cold!"

I could well understand her feeling. I had experienced it often. Nothing has ever filled me with a more hopeless sense of inadequacy and utter uselessness than to watch, as I am often compelled to watch, the deplorable results of the determined choice made by certain human beings to go backward and downward rather than forward and upward,—a choice in which no outside advice can be of any avail because they will not take it even if it is offered. It is a life-and-death matter for their own wills to determine,—and no power, human or divine, can alter the course they elect to adopt. As well expect that God would revert His law of gravitation to save the silly suicide who leaps to destruction from tower or steeple, as that He would change the eternal working of His higher Spiritual Law to rescue the resolved Soul which, knowing the difference between good and evil, deliberately prefers evil. If an angel of light, a veritable 'Son of the Morning' rebels, he must fall from Heaven. There is no alternative; until of his own free-will he chooses to rise again.

My friend and I had often talked together on these knotty points which tangled up what should be the straightness of many a life's career, and as we mutually knew each other's opinions we did not discuss them at the moment.

Time passed quickly,—the train rushed farther and farther north, and by six o'clock on that warm, sunshiny afternoon we were in the grimy city of Glasgow, from whence we went on to a still grimier quarter, Greenock, where we put up for the night. The 'best' hotel was a sorry affair, but we were too tired to mind either a bad dinner or uncomfortable rooms, and went to bed glad of any place wherein to sleep. Next morning we woke up very early, refreshed and joyous, in time to see the sun rise in a warm mist of gold over a huge man-o'-war outside Greenock harbour,—a sight which, in its way, was very fine and rather suggestive of a Turner picture.

"Dear old Sol!" said Francesca, shading her eyes as she looked at the dazzle of glory—"His mission is to sustain life,—and the object of that war-vessel bathed in all his golden rays is to destroy it. What unscrupulous villains men are! Why cannot nations resolve on peace and amity, and if differences arise agree to settle them by arbitration? It's such a pagan and brutal thing to kill thousands of innocent men just because Governments quarrel."

"I entirely agree with you,"—I said—"All the same I don't approve of Governments that preach peace while they drain the people's pockets for the purpose of increasing armaments, after the German fashion. Let us be ready with adequate defences,—but it's surely very foolish to cripple our nation at home by way of preparation for wars which may never happen."

"And yet they MAY happen!" said Francesca, her eyes still dreamily watching the sunlit heavens—"Everything in the Universe is engaged in some sort of a fight, so it seems to me. The tiniest insects are for ever combating each other. In the very channels of our own blood the poisonous and non-poisonous germs are constantly striving for the mastery, and how can we escape the general ordainment? Life itself is a continual battle between good and evil, and if it were not so we should have no object in living. The whole business is evidently intended to be a dose conflict to the end."

"There is no end!" I said.

She looked at me almost compassionately.

"So you imagine!"

I smiled.

"So I KNOW!"

A vague expression flitted over her face,—an expression with which I had become familiar. She was a most lovable and intelligent creature, but she could not think very far,—the effort wearied and perplexed her.

"Well, then, it must be an everlasting skirmish, I suppose!" she said, laughingly,—"I wonder if our souls will ever get tired!"

"Do you think God ever gets tired?" I asked.

She looked startled,—then amused.

"He ought to!" she declared, with vivacity—"I don't mean to be irreverent, but really, what with all the living things in all the millions of worlds trying to get what they ought not to have, and wailing and howling when they are disappointed of their wishes, He ought to be very, very tired!"

"But He is not,"—I said;—"If He were, there would indeed be an end of all! Should the Creator be weary of His work, the work would be undone. I wish we thought of this more often!"

She put her arm round me kindly.

"You are a strange creature!" she said—"You think a great deal too much of all these abstruse subjects. After all, I'm glad you are going on this cruise with the Harland people. They will bring you down from the spheres with a run! They will, I'm sure! You'll hear no conversation that does not turn on baths, medicines, massage, and general cure-alls! And when you come on to stay with me in Inverness-shire you'll be quite commonplace and sensible!"

I smiled. The dear Francesca always associated 'the commonplace and sensible' together, as though they were fitted to companion each other. The complete reverse is, of course, the case, for the 'commonplace' is generally nothing more than the daily routine of body which is instinctively followed by beasts and birds as equally as by man, and has no more to do with real 'sense' or pure mentality than the ticking of a watch has to do with the enormous forces of the sun. What we call actual 'Sense' is the perception of the Soul,—a perception which cannot be limited to things which are merely material, inasmuch as it passes beyond outward needs and appearances and reaches to the causes which create those outward needs and appearances. I was, however, satisfied to leave my friend in possession of the field of argument, the more readily as our parting from each other was so near at hand.

We journeyed together by the steamer 'Columba' to Rothesay, where, on entering the beautiful bay, crowded at this season with pleasure craft, the first object which attracted our attention was the very vessel for which I was bound, the 'Diana,' one of the most magnificent yachts ever built to gratify the whim of a millionaire. Tourists on board our steamer at once took up positions where they could obtain the best view of her, and many were the comments we heard concerning her size and the beauty of her lines as she rode at anchor on the sunlit water.

"You'll be in a floating palace,"—said Francesca, as we approached Rothesay pier, and she bade me an affectionate adieu—"Now take care of yourself, and don't fly away to the moon on what you call an etheric vibration! Remember, if you get tired of the Harlands to come to me at once."

I promised, and we parted. On landing at Rothesay I was almost immediately approached by a sailor from the 'Diana,' who, spying my name on my luggage, quickly possessed himself of it and told me the motor launch was in waiting to take me over to the yacht. I was on my way across the sparkling bay before the 'Columba' started out again from the pier, and Francesca, standing on the steamer's deck, waved to me a smiling farewell as I went. In about ten minutes I was on board the 'Diana,' shaking hands with Morton Harland and his daughter Catherine, who, wrapped up in shawls on a deck chair, looked as though she were guarding herself from the chills of a rigorous winter rather than basking in the warm sunshine of a summer morning.

"You look very well!"—she said, in tones of plaintive amiability—"And so wonderfully bright!"

"It's such a bright day,"—I answered, feeling as if I ought somehow to apologise for a healthy appearance, "One can't help being happy!"

She sighed and smiled faintly, and her maid appearing at that moment to take my travelling bag and wraps, I was shown the cabin, or rather the state-room which was to be mine during the cruise. It was a luxurious double apartment, bedroom and sitting-room together, divided only by the hanging folds of a rich crimson silk curtain, and exquisitely fitted with white enamelled furniture ornamented with hand-wrought silver. The bed had no resemblance whatever to a ship's berth, but was an elaborate full-sized affair, canopied in white silk embroidered with roses; the carpet was of a thick softness into which my feet sank as though it were moss, and a tall silver and crystal vase, full of gorgeous roses, was placed at the foot of a standing mirror framed in silver, so that the blossoms were reflected double. The sitting-room was provided with easy chairs, a writing-table, and a small piano, and here, too, masses of roses showed their fair faces from every corner. It was all so charming that I could not help uttering an exclamation of delight, and the maid who was unpacking my things smiled sympathetically.

"It's perfectly lovely!" I said, turning to her with eagerness—"It's quite a little fairyland! But isn't this Miss Harland's cabin?"

"Oh dear no, miss,"—she replied—"Miss Harland wouldn't have all these things about her on any account. There are no carpets or curtains in Miss Harland's rooms. She thinks them very unhealthy. She has only a bit of matting on the floor, and an iron bedstead—all very plain. And as for roses!—she wouldn't have a rose near her for ever so!—she can't bear the smell of them."

I made no comment. I was too enchanted with my surroundings for the moment to consider how uncomfortable my hostess chose to make herself.

"Who arranged these rooms?" I asked.

"Mr. Harland gave orders to the steward to make them as pretty as he could,"—said the maid—"John" and she blushed—"has a lot of taste."

I smiled. I saw at once how matters were between her and "John." Just then there was a sound of thudding and grinding above my head, and I realised that we were beginning to weigh anchor. Quickly tying on my yachting cap and veil, I hurried on deck, and was soon standing beside my host, who seemed pleased at the alacrity with which I had joined him, and I watched with feelings of indescribable exhilaration the 'Diana' being loosed from her moorings. Steam was up, and in a very short time her bowsprit swung round and pointed outward from the bay. Quivering like an eager race-horse ready to start, she sprang forward; and then, with a stately sweeping curve, glided across the water, catting it into bright wavelets with her sword-like keel and churning a path behind her of opalescent foam. We were off on our voyage of pleasure at last,—a voyage which the Fates had determined should, for one adventurer at least, lead to strange regions as yet unexplored. But no premonitory sign was given to me, or suggestion that I might be the one chosen to sail 'the perilous seas of fairy lands forlorn'—for in spiritual things of high import, the soul that is most concerned is always the least expectant.