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

by Marie Corelli

  “No — not a word! You know, Dick, they don’t want us — especially when we notice their domestic quarrels! They quite hate us, then! — they really do! And perhaps, after all, they are right. If I quarreled with you, or you quarreled with me, I shouldn’t like anybody to come and ask me about it! — I really shouldn’t — not even a Bishop!”

  He laughed at the open roundness of her child-like blue eyes.

  “My dear, I only wanted to know if the poor wretched woman had recovered,” — he said, lightly— “Dan Kiernan had undoubtedly hurt her very much—”

  “Oh, but she liked it!” declared Azalea— “She wouldn’t hear a word against him! And, Dick, you ought to remember that if women like to be knocked down by their husbands, you really cant prevent it! If Mrs. Kiernan were any worse, the doctor would have sent us word, — I’m sure you needn’t be at all anxious on that score! Nobody in the village is bothering about her at all, — they’re all quite taken up with that poor dead man, — and they won’t think of anything else till he’s buried. Dear me!” and she heaved a little sigh— “I do wish it didn’t remind me so of wasps!”

  “Wasps!” he exclaimed— “Azalea, what do you mean!”

  “Oh, I know it sounds dreadful and irreverent and all that!” she said, with a dimpling smile— “but I really can’t help it, Dick! Haven’t you ever seen a wasp’s funeral? I have! I saw one not long ago in the garden. The dead wasp was on the lawn, — and there came a whole lot of other wasps buzzing round it and making the most awful fuss — and the crowd got thicker and thicker, and each wasp seemed to have something to say about the body — and then they settled in a mass upon it, — and I watched the whole business, till suddenly they all flew away — and — there was not a vestige of the wasp corpse left! It was gone!” Here she put on a face of the greatest seriousness. “What do you suppose became of it?” —

  “Can’t imagine!” and Everton laughed again— “Have you any idea?”

  She raised herself on tiptoe, and with a coaxing touch pretended to arrange his tie more becomingly.

  “Yes, I have — but I don’t like to say it,” she answered— “I think it was eaten up! I do! I believe that’s the way wasps get rid of their defunct friends and relatives! Of course I’m wrong, — and some dreadful spectacled old entomologist would tell me I’m a perfect fool. But that’s how the thing appeared to me. And when I see all the villagers of Shadbrook swarming round Mrs. Hadley’s cottage and wanting ‘to look at the corpse’ — that’s what they say, you know! — it makes me feel wasps all over!”

  Everton struggled with his feelings; — he tried to check his mirth and to look serious, but it was no use. Azalea was perfectly incorrigible. To her there was nothing of grave import in life or death, — persons and events presented themselves to her in a manner which to him was incomprehensible and yet comical, — he could hardly reproach her, and yet he knew well enough that the way in which she viewed the sorrows of others, proved her to be lacking in that delicate sympathy which poets in olden time used gallantly to maintain was the best charm of a perfect woman. She had indeed a faculty resembling that of the halfpenny modern press, which chiefly rejoices in its ability to make a jest of everything, even of the honor and renown of the country on whose too easy tolerance it battens. There is a strong taint of the monkey in all semi-educated men and women — a tendency to grin and chatter and throw nutshells at the sun. The mongrel man, who is a cross between an ape and a savage, cannot be expected to appreciate the highest and purest things of life, — and it is just because the mongrel breeds are gaining undue ascendency in human affairs that poetry has been killed outright and all the sister arts are slowly dying. Too many mongrels are in control of our press, our finance and our government, — and it is possible we may have to wait a couple of centuries yet, before with fire and sword we cleanse our Augean stables and recover the true types of noble Manhood and Womanhood for the grace and the glory of England. Meanwhile it is the fashion to ‘sneer down’ warmth of heart and sentiment, — and Azalea, though she had a certain amount of tenderness and feeling in her dainty composition, was so far from wishing to give way to such ‘weakness’ that she preferred to laugh at a serious subject rather than take time to consider it. Her husband looking at her now, as in all her pink and white prettiness she smiled up into his face, realized in a flash of comprehension how utterly futile it would be to talk to her about the spiritual and moral needs of Jacynth Miller. For a moment he had thought that perhaps he could persuade her to have the girl at the Vicarage for a day or two so that she might talk to her and reason with her ‘like a sister,’ — so he had said to himself in the simple, foolish way of a perfectly guileless man who is generally hopelessly ignorant of the complex nature of a woman. But somehow after her story of the wasp’s funeral, he felt that he could not speak to her at all on the topic which just now was uppermost in his mind. If the loneliness and sorrow of a broken-hearted widow deprived of her only son, could not move her to any sense of real compassion, then the uncertain prospect of a girl’s life — especially when that girl was as beautiful as Jacynth — would scarcely appeal to her interest. Teased by his own thoughts, he gave a slight sigh. His wife put her fair arms caressingly about him.

  “You’re vexed, I’m sure!” — she murmured— “You don’t like my ‘wasp’ way of looking at funerals! I know it’s quite wicked of me, but—”

  He interrupted her with a kiss.

  “You have a merry heart, little one,” — he said, tenderly— “And may you always keep it! For myself I’m afraid I feel the griefs of others rather keenly — and I can’t forget poor Hadley’s tortured eyes, or his mother’s despair—”

  “I knew it would be disagreeable!” — and drawing herself away from him she gave a tiny shake of her skirts expressive of defiance— “And you didn’t do him any good by going and praying at his bedside — I’m sure you didn’t!”

  He was silent.

  “Sometimes,” she went on— “dying people get worse directly they see the clergyman. I should, I’m sure! Though, of course, it will be all right when I die, because you’re my husband, and there you are, all ready—”

  With a sudden passionate exclamation he caught her in his arms.

  “Azalea, my darling, don’t talk like that! You die! You! Oh my love, my wife! Don’t you know I couldn’t live without you! Do you think I could pray by your deathbed?”

  She clung to him, trembling a little.

  “Couldn’t you?” she whispered— “Why not?”

  His hands closed jealously over her little golden-curled head, and he pressed her almost roughly to his heart.

  “Don’t ask me!” he whispered back— “It’s too hard a question!”

  A silence followed — a silence in which love, and love only, held them both in thrall. Everton almost heard the strong pulsation of the warm life-blood in his veins, — while at the same time his spiritual inward self shuddered as it were, on the brink of an abyss of eternal cold. Azalea’s query had for the moment startled him with a kind of terror. For — if he could not pray by the deathbed of one whom he himself loved, where was his professed faith in the great Creed of Christ with which he sought to console others? He dared not pursue the thought. The exquisite undefinable emotion he felt in the mere act of holding his wife in his close embrace was but a part of his ordinary earthly experience and existence — a bodily ecstasy with which this world alone was connected, and which certainly was not promised in the world to come. For there, according to Scripture, both marrying and giving in marriage are at an end, and redeemed souls are ‘as the angels of God in Heaven.’ Whether those angels, as in the poem of ‘Annabel Lee,’ covet the love of human beings on earth, is a fantastic point only fit to be argued by dreamers and romanticists — but so far as Richard Everton was concerned, he would not at that moment have exchanged the delight of his own personal passion for all the glory of an impersonal paradise. Of course the ardent glow of feeling was brief, — it alway
s is. No human being can stand too long upon the topmost peak of joy. It is always necessary to come down, — sometimes to fall off precipitately, — but Azalea managed to make a more graceful descent by slipping gently out of her husband’s arms and shaking her pretty head at him as though he were a naughty boy.

  “We’ve been quite sentimental!” she said— “And — oh, Dick! — how you’ve rumpled my hair!”

  He smiled, and going to his desk began to turn over papers mechanically. His nerves were quivering like harp-strings swept by a storm, — and every touch upon them awoke a tone of melody or discord. In days to come he was destined to remember those few moments fraught with meaning, when the overwhelming knowledge of his own weakness as a minister of Christ, had borne down his imagined spiritual force with a sudden chill blow, — when he had realized that the dying Hadley’s words might yet challenge him from the grave as to the use of prayer, — and when for the first time he had felt like ‘a reed shaken in the wind by the mere dread thought of being called upon to pray for his own wife’s departing soul. A witty French philosopher assures us that there is nothing which we can bear with greater equanimity than the misfortunes of others, — and no one is more frequently called upon to display this heroic form of endurance than a clergyman. Often he becomes so accustomed to it that he forgets he is not absolutely safeguarded himself from affliction, and when he is made the object of a ‘visitation’ in the way of suffering, he is not only surprised but frequently offended. He considers it unjust that God, whom he serves according to orthodox Church rule, should retaliate upon him with any rods in pickle. Yet such rods are often laid sharply across his back, and if science be correct in the assertion that nothing is without a cause for being, then we must presume he has deserved the castigation, even though his faults be not publicly apparent. And so truly did Everton grasp the sense of his own unworthiness, that in a kind of semi-conscious way, he mentally sought to punish himself for enjoying too much happiness.

  “I am really one of the most fortunate men in the world,” — he argued— “God has showered benefits upon me, — and yet how many times a day lately have I not grumbled at the limitations of my life at Shadbrook! I ought to be ashamed of my discontent. I am not half grateful enough for all the blessings I have, — for my wife and child — for my house and all its comforts — for the peace and health of a country life, — for the chances of helping and comforting my parishioners, — why, there are a thousand things which should move me to hourly thanksgiving! And yet I am often churlish and dissatisfied. I have even imagined that I deserve a wider sphere of intellectual effort than my present charge, — what insufferable conceit on my part! Evidently I must take myself strongly in hand. I need to learn the lesson of gratitude — the one least known by all the world of men!”

  And even as he thought, so he acted, and set about all his duties with a patiently renewed and earnestly reconsidered zeal. When the day came for Hadley’s funeral, he performed that last sad religious rite with a gentle tenderness and compassion for the deeply distressed mother of the dead lad that did not fail to impress all those of his parishioners who were present with a sense of something like surprise that a parson should deem it worth his while to be so brotherly and kind to the merely ‘common’ folk. There were, however, very few that followed the corpse to the grave, — and those few were, or appeared to be, more uneasy than grieved. Everton, always keenly sensitive to impressions, caught one or two of their shifty glances at him, and wondered what they had in their minds. When all was over, and the poor weeping Mrs. Hadley had thrown a small bunch of white narcissi upon the coffin that held everything that was mortal of the son she had brought into the world for no better end than this, — he waited a few moments in the churchyard, while the small group of mourners slowly dispersed; and an uncomfortable feeling came over him that there was something wrong, but what it was he could not determine. He watched the sexton casting spadefuls of rich brown earth into the open grave, and presently spoke to him, though he knew there was nothing in the way of information to be got out of a man who had won for himself the nickname of ‘Silent Stowey’ on account of his extreme taciturnity.

  “Poor Hadley seems to have had very few friends,” — he said.

  Jacob Stowey, verger, sexton, bell-ringer and general useful man about the church, looked up for a second, then down again, and went on with his ‘shoveling in.’

  “All the village knew him, and knew how long and patiently he had suffered,” — continued Everton— “I should have thought—”

  “That all the village ‘ud be ’ere!” — interrupted Stowey— “But it ain’t.”

  He moistened his hands and worked with fresh energy.

  “The people seemed so sorry about it, and so sympathetic,” here Everton, despite himself, thought of Azalea’s description of the ‘wasp’s funeral’— “They must be able to forget very quickly, or some other event must have happened of greater interest—”

  Stowey turned his head and weather-beaten visage slowly round, and surveyed the Vicar with a pair of very vague, filmy gray eyes.

  “Mebbe that’s it,” — he said— “Mebbe.”

  He threw more spadefuls of earth over Hadley’s now invisible coffin. Everton hesitated another moment, standing by the grave like an almost supernatural figure, with the wind blowing his surplice about him in snow-white folds, as of the mantle of a saint or a martyr.

  “But there’s nothing,” — he began tentatively.

  “Nawt’s told me, an’ I knows nawt,” — said Stowey— “I bells an’ I buries — but I doan’t clapperwag. Clapper-waggin’s for maids an’ fools, an’ I bain’t naither.”

  He continued his work, and Everton, feeling it would be useless to ask him any more questions, presently bade him a cheery good-day and left him.

  All the rest of that afternoon he happened to be particularly busy; there was a great deal of correspondence to clear and accounts to make up, so that he did not go out, but remained for the most part of the time in his study. Not a single caller came near the Vicarage, and the hours lagged slowly and somewhat heavily away. With the fall of evening he put by his books and papers as usual, and gave himself over to the quiet joys of domesticity, which for him were very few and simple. Chief among them was the privilege of seeing his small son ‘tubbed’ and put to bed — a function in which Master Laurence displayed himself to the best advantage, kicking out his well-knit little limbs in every direction and positively reveling in every splash of the sponge in the water. No angel ever smiled more divinely than he did, when, nude as a cupid and only lacking wings, he sat on his nurse’s knee waiting for his clean night-gown to be put on, — he was all radiant with comfort and good-nature, and it was difficult to realize that such a beautiful, innocent little being was destined to become that too often sad and weary thing, a Man. It was a point on which Everton often dwelt with a certain wistful and tender solicitude.

  “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!” he mused— “Only — the crudest part of it all is that the evil is sure to come!”

  That night he sat in the drawing-room reading, or rather pretending to read, while his wife sang to him, — another of his purely ‘domestic’ pleasures. Azalea had a very small voice, — there was not a thrill of emotion in it, but it was pretty and bird-like, and sounded particularly sweet in a more than usually senseless song about “Meet me in de corn when de wind am blowin’.” There was no real sentiment in the thing, but somehow, as he heard the clear, light, child-like soprano warbling the ‘coon’ nonsense which passed for a love-ditty, he was touched to a feeling of something like tears. He laid the open book he held gently on the table, and looked lovingly at his wife’s dainty figure seated at the piano. The lamplight gleamed on the gold of her hair, twisted in its many shining love-locks, and flashed on the white roundness of her arms.

  “Dere’s a breakin’ in de clouds an’ de stars am showin’, Oh meet me in de corn when he wind am blowin’!” she sang in quaintly t
ender little notes of level tune — perfectly monotonous and passionless, yet effective in their way, and sufficient to charm any man who was not too captious a critic. A knock at the drawing-room door broke the spell — the music ceased, and a maid-servant entered.

  “Dr. Brand would like to see you, sir,” — she said.

  “Dr. Brand!” The Vicar echoed the name in some surprise and glanced at his watch— “Why it’s nearly ten o’clock.”